


And like the cat I have nine times to die

by treefrogie84



Category: Leverage, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Medical Torture, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Multi, Quynh comes back, none of them should ever be left alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 52,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27916660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: Parker and Eliot are on a date when the TV above the bar announces that Stephen Merrick is dead. Its the how that catches both of them off guard, and splits them apart, scrambling for answers. Eliot runs back to the family he walked out on centuries ago, Parker goes searching for someone else who can do what she can do. And Alec is just confused and bereft, wondering why both his partners disappeared on him.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 74
Kudos: 202





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is TOG movie compliant, not comics. It's _mostly_ canon compliant for Leverage, just... ignore everything about their childhoods. 
> 
> Title is from [Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49000/lady-lazarus) because it was the first thing I found that sounded right. No beta, we die like immortals.
> 
> Like normal, thanks go to Cina, Hermit, Foop, Thayer and Ry for holding my hand and helping me work out obnoxious plot points.

**THEN (Eliot)** :

Something about Sebastien just... doesn’t sit right. Eliot’s not sure what. It’s not the forgery, or the frozen death at the end of a noose— they’ve all spent their share of time dying traitor’s deaths. Not forgery, usually, but that’s because they’re normally doing something else. They are good at war, best at it, but they also have lifetimes worth of other skills.

So no, it’s not the forgery. Or devotion to his family. It’s just... _something_.

The others don’t feel it. Joseph and Nicolas are themselves, wrapped up in each other and the exploding Paris art scene. Andromache buying entire lots of captain’s logs, regardless of origin, still searching for Quynh.

(Actually, that might be it— the faintest look of disgust on the man’s face when he saw them reach for each other in the Russian cold. And the greater frown when they reached one of their hiding spots on the outskirts of Dresden and Eliot is the one to do the shopping and start the evening meal while Andromache checks their weapons for damage. In all his long life, Eliot has rarely had the patience to deal with idiocy, even less from a man who should be his brother.)

Whatever it is, Eliot has spent nearly a decade fighting it. Trying to distract himself from the growing distrust. Ignoring how his back tenses whenever Sebastien is playing rear guard during a fight, how little he sleeps when they’re forced to share a room.

It comes to a head somewhere in Western Africa, helping expel one colonial power from the region or another— he lost track years ago, all the European countries are struggling to keep hold of their colonies— when ~~Sebastien~~ Booker, now, goes left when the rest of the team goes right and it all goes completely pear-shaped. Andy disappears into the jungle, Joe and Nicky die at least five times that Eliot catches, Eliot himself takes a bad death after a bad death. The others laugh it off— as much as Andy is capable of laughing at anything— when they’re back to their rooms two weeks later, blood soaked and starving, like the nightmare was nothing.

Eliot watches as they welcome Booker home, _trusting_ him. Swallowing, Eliot slinks from the main room, picks through his bag to grab only the essentials, and slips out the back door and into the garden.

Tilting his head back, he stares at the sky, finding unfamiliar constellations in the stars above. A break, that’s all. Some time away from Booker and the unease and then he’ll come back. They’ve all done that before, although less since Quynh... Just needs to get his head on tight, figure out what’s _actually_ bugging him about Sebastien and...

“You’re leaving.” It’s not a question, for all that Andromache’s voice raises at the end, like she wants it to be.

He nods. “Something... I don’t trust him. A decade, we’ve been working together, and I don’t trust him.”

“Why? Why don’t you trust him? He’s spent—“

“I _don’t_ know! You think I’ve not spent all this time asking myself _why_ I don’t trust the man who should be my brother? You do, Yusuf and Nicolò do, why can’t my gut allow me to do the same!” His voice breaks unexpectedly as she reaches for him. “Whatever the problem is, it must be me.”

“Eliot— Elijah...”

His heart breaks, but he doesn’t know how to make this better for her, doesn’t know if anyone can. “I’ll come back, Andy. You know I will. I just need to be alone for a while.” She can’t see his grin in the dark, but he does it all the same, just to ease her heart a bit. “We’re not meant to be alone, but I’m not meant to be surrounded. Myself and the sea, going a-Viking.”

“You hated raiding,” she points out with a choked out laugh. “The bread was stale and salted fish disgusting.”

“That was centuries ago. Maybe its better on steamships.” He pauses to steady his voice. “Unless you don’t—“

“Asshole,” she scoffs. “Check in from time to time— the London and Guisseinville houses. Or the house in Malta.”

“You don’t even know where the house in Malta is.”

“But Joe and Nicky do.”

It’s their house, of course they know where it is. Eliot has only been there twice, and sworn to never appear uninvited both times. “I’m sorry,” he says finally. “I wish—“

“Don’t start. Go.”

He pulls her into a hug, cupping her neck and smacking a kiss onto her forehead. “Let me know when you’re in the Americas. I think I’m going to start there.” Releasing her, he steps back and pulls his bag over his shoulder.

He should wait for Joe and Nicky, shouldn’t disappear into the night like a thief, but the idea of going through this again... he’ll send them a letter from the coast when he gets there. Explain.

Or perhaps when he reaches New Orleans. Joe’s anger and betrayal will pass like a summer storm but Nicolò’s... it might be safer to have an ocean between them.

The garden gate squeals when he pulls it open, piercing the night like one of Nicky’s arrows, before Eliot merges into the dark that surrounds them.

* * *

**NOW** :

The news chyron flashes the headline under the soccer game, _Merrick CEO found dead, apparent suicide._ Beside him at the bar, Parker makes a noise— disappointed— and pulls out her phone. Eliot doesn’t bother hiding that he’s looking over her shoulder, paying more attention to the news reports than the game.

His team is losing anyway.

Parker tilts the phone, letting him get a better look at the header image, a car crushed, blood still visible even though the body has been removed. She goes to scroll down, but Eliot stops her, tapping on the image to enlarge it.

“Only one body?” He asks quietly, under the noise of the bar as someone scores on screen. “That’s not right.”

Parker nods tightly. Shoving her phone into her pocket, she steps away from the bar.

“Call Alec,” Eliot half-orders, draining his beer. “See if he can dig anything up.” He knows what Alec is going to find: two people fell seventeen stories and one of them got up and walked away.

_Dammit, Andy._

“I might need a few days,” he forces out. “Depending on what Alec turns up.”

Parker nods, a faint frown crossing her face. “I don’t… that’ll be fine.”

Fine isn't a word in Parker’s vocabulary, but Eliot ignores the warning flare his brain throws up. Andy’s daredevil-ing might be putting them all at risk. He can understand her throwing him to the wolves, it’s been two hundred years since they worked together regularly, but Nicolò? Yusuf? Booker? No. Something else is going on.

* * *

It’s been nearly ten years since they found each other, formed their triad, and they don’t keep secrets from each other— not if it’s their secret to tell. So she resolutely puts Eliot’s behavior out of mind, twisting and turning the image on her phone until it makes sense.

Parker doesn’t see the world the same way Eliot does, doesn’t see distinctive patterns or habits or anything else. She _does_ see physics. And Merrick’s fall… isn’t right. She runs the calculations in her head a few more times, coming up with the same answer: too much blood, impact crater on the car not right. A second person fell from that window.

* * *

“Spencer,” Sterling says behind him as he inspects the car wreckage. Eliot doesn’t know how he found him, but he’s not going to react either. Doesn’t want to give Sterling another advantage.

Straightening slowly, Eliot turns to look, sizing Sterling up for the first time in years.

Still wearing a suit, Armani or something similar and hand tailored, Sterling is a bit grayer, has lost some weight and carries what he has differently. They’ve avoided each other for years, and this aging man is a shock. He’s nearing the end of his life as Eliot Spencer. “Sterling. Didn’t expect you to be handling this. Don’t you have some art to chase down?”

“Let’s just say that I keep an ear out for anything related to the Black Book.”

“This wasn’t,” Eliot says flatly, glancing around the scrapyard. “I’m sure Merrick had plenty of enemies. And we don’t kill people. You know that.”

“I know the others don’t. You though…”

“I’ve not been that guy in a long time.” For less time than he _was_ that guy, admittedly, but it’s been a relief, not killing everyone he ends up at odds with. Turning on his heel, he heads back to the entrance. He needs to get back to the hotel so he can start searching.

And figure out the best way to kill himself, well enough that Parker and Alec won’t come looking. An explosion maybe. Those are pretty final.

“Goodbye, Sterling. Stay out of my way.”

* * *

The code pops up a few blocks away from their London safe house, Archaic Latin spray painted in an alley in SoHo. It fit better thirty years ago, before the neighborhood gentrified and all the porn shops moved, but such is the progress of time.

Nicky spots it as they cross the street. “Joe, look.”

Already mentally rehearsing dinner preparation, it takes Joe a moment to see the graffiti and translate it into something that makes sense. “Elijah is here? Why?”

“I do not know, but it has been over seventy years. Perhaps he is ready to return to us.”

“Perhaps.” Joe frowns, moving to the mouth of the alley. “We need to catch up with him anyway, let him meet Nile.”

Nicky nods, pulling a knife from somewhere and crossing to the lurid green paint and scratching his mark through it. “He knows where the safe house is. He can meet us there tomorrow.” And they can all apologize for doubting Elijah’s gut, nearly two hundred years too late.

“He was right, love,” Joe says with a sigh, echoing Nicky’s thoughts. “We shouldn’t have—“

“No,” Nicky cuts him off, sinking his knife back into a pocket. “We gave Booker every chance, welcomed him in, called him brother. It was his choice to toss that away, same as it was Elijah’s to leave when he could no longer stomach working with him.”

“Are you still angry?” Joe glances at the mark he’d made in the graffiti, an acknowledgement and welcome in one. “We do not need to tell Andy and Nile— meet with him in private while you air your grievances.”

“With Elijah? No. Worried, perhaps. He’s been gone for a long time.”

“We saw him during the war—“

“All the wars, _habibi_. Does not change it has been a long time.” Seventy years since they worked together, forty since they’ve worked near each other, nearly fifteen since they last saw each other face to face. Nicky trusts that Elijah is the same man he has been since they found him, but he’s been alone for a long time. Many things can change.

Perhaps they were too harsh in their punishment for Booker.

He pushes the thought aside— he’s not done being angry yet, and a week is far too little time. “Let’s go home. We promised Nile proper Italian for dinner, after all.”

* * *

Nile grabs the shopping bags as soon as they reach the flat, nearly tripping over the rug to get to them before Andy even levers herself off the loveseat. Joe laughs, handing his bag over.

She pries it open, investigating it thoroughly with a slight frown. “You’re going to teach me how to make this, right? These don’t look anything like what Lydia uses on TV.”

Joe has no idea who Lydia is, but if she’s on TV, he doubts she cooks anything like his Nicky. No one remembers the old recipes any more— even Nicolò has had to make changes when ingredients were no longer available. “Nicky is very good at teaching.”

She smiles brightly and disappears towards the kitchen, following Nicky without a glance back.

Andy is already waiting when he turns back, eyebrow raised. “So, what’d you find?”

“Elijah made contact,” he says simply, ears tuned to the delighted groan of Nile as she gets set to chopping onions. “I guess he saw the news.”

Andy’s hand drops to her side, covering her gunshot wound unconsciously. “Good, I’m… good. He can meet Nile, tell us ‘I told you so’ in person.” Say goodbye, she doesn’t say, but it’s written in the slump of her shoulders, the tightness in her knee. It’s only been a week, they’re all having trouble adjusting.

“Tomorrow, boss. We’re still using spy craft from the Cold War— I doubt he’ll even see the response before dawn.”

“He knows where we are.”

“But he does not know if he is welcome. It’s been a long time since he has seen you.”

She laughs a little, darkly but still a laugh. “I’m the least of his worries. Nicky—“

“Got over it decades ago,” Nicky says from behind them, leaning against the doorway. “I will admit, waiting until he reached America was probably a good choice at the time however.”

“Who?” Nile asks from behind him, puzzled and not quite hurt. “You said it was just us.”

Joe looks at Andy, lets her choose how to answer the implied accusation.

“Mostly, it is. Elijah went his own way not long after we found Book.” She cracks something like a smile and pushes herself to her feet. “But he doesn’t work with us, not anymore, so he never came up.”

“Yeah, so what does he do? Waltz around, helpin’ drug lords all day? If you all don’t do that shit, and he doesn’t help you...”

“Mostly? I help take down crooked CEOs.” Elijah is quiet, voice worn smooth by too long in the American Midwest, and _tired_. “Me and my team.”

Nicky whirls around, nearly hitting Nile in his haste. “El—“

“Eliot, now,” he says firmly. “For a little while longer anyway.”

Nicky pauses, just a heartbeat, before pulling him into a hug. “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

Eliot shrugs, gently extracting himself from Nicky’s hold. “I need to take care of my business in the city before—“ He stops, and his shoulders fall. “Before my partners follow me.”

“Your what?” Joe says, pushing himself to his feet without thought. “You did what?” It’s too much, two betrayals in too short of a time. He aims a punch at Eliot’s face.

Eliot side steps it, grabbing Joe’s arm and yanking him into the tiny hallway. Pushing Joe into the wall, he pins him with his hips, and holds a knife out with his spare hand, ready to throw it. “You’ve gotten slow.”

Joe snorts, snaking his hand around to grab the knife, and pushing away from the wall. Grinning fiercely, he catches Nicky blocking the doorway, keeping Nile and Andy away from the fight. “No one has ever been as good at hand to hand as you.” Spiking the knife into the kitchen door frame, he sweeps his leg between Eliot’s.

They go back and forth a few times, more play than anything else now that the initial anger has been taken care of.

“Enough, brother” Nicky says after a few minutes. “Come meet Nile. Tell us about where you’ve been these past few years.”

Eliot glances at Joe before stepping back, dropping his hands and nodding in apology. “You’re right. Sorry.”

Joe shakes his head, pulling him into a hug of his own. “You have been missed.”

* * *

They’ve been together for nearly a decade, working together for longer, but Alec tries not to lie to himself. They still have secrets— jobs they’re not proud of, family members they’ve never introduced, the occasional job away from the team.

Eliot’s the worst of them, getting mysterious phone calls from international numbers bounced around the world and then he’s abruptly on a plane/boat/train for some godforsaken corner of the Earth, when Alec can follow him at all. But they all do it— they all had careers before Leverage, complete with owing favors.

Except Parker and Eliot _both_ took off this time. And anything that’s big enough to pull them both away from the team without pulling him…

He doesn’t even know what that would be, in this world of computers and cameras. Sure, they’ve always done their best to stay hidden, but nothing like this. Especially not after something like that death at Merrick pharmaceuticals last week.

Somehow, it’s a race between him and some unknown hacker— grabbing the footage before it gets deleted. (And if Alec happens to spill a mess of corporate secrets about that new cancer drug or the longevity drugs they’re promising? Well, he’s just doing his job.) But as good as they are, he’s better.

But that doesn’t tell him what is going on. The footage is amazing-- at least four others who appear to have the same trick he does-- but that doesn’t explain why Eliot and Parker took off.

A five word phrase into an internet voicemail and a quick booking of a flight into Bordeaux— he’ll figure out where he’s going after he gets there.

* * *

Despite how long it’s been, the old familiarity still works, and Eliot lets out a low breath when Andy knocks into his shoulder in the hallway. “How you been?” The new girl— Nile— has followed Nicky and Joe into the kitchen, but he’s acutely aware of how much they’re listening.

Information is never wasted, and how else to pick up the patterns to determine friend from foe?

She snorts and crosses her arms. “About like you’d expect.”

“Boss?”

She shakes her head, ignoring the lock of hair that falls into her face. “We’ll catch up over dinner. And go easy on the kid— she’s new.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. How old is she?”

“Twenty-six,” Andy says, forcing a laugh. “Can you even imagine?”

“It’s been a while.” Had been few years even before his first death, he’s pretty sure. Most of them— not all— seem to die somewhere in their mid-thirties. Booker was in his early forties, Andy has no idea. “She a marine?”

Andy nods. “Pulled her out of Afghanistan before they could transfer her for more tests.” She pauses, raises an eyebrow. “You remember much?”

“Went through basic again a few years back. Wanted to keep my hand in.”

“Good news, Nile!” Andy announces loudly. “Found you a sparring partner who’s gotten training in the last twenty years.”

“As opposed to trying to counter something that fell out of favor with horses?” Nile asks dryly, glancing up from her seat at the table. “I can’t wait.”

“More… translation,” Eliot offers, nodding to Nicky as he enters the kitchen. “Still going to show you how to kick ass, in every style we can. When we’re out of the city at least.”

Nile doesn’t notice the sharp looks he gets from the others with that.

“You’re staying then?” Nicky asks carefully.

Eliot shrugs. “I have some things to clean up first.”

“Like?” Nile demands.

“I’ve been living under the same name for almost as long as you’ve been alive, kid. There’s some loose ends to tie up.”

She tilts her head, like she has more questions, but doesn’t say anything.

Nicky announces dinner is ready and it all gets put aside until later, trading stories about the past few years instead.

Andy, Nicky and Nile settle at the table while Eliot and Joe do the dishes, cracking jokes and telling the lighthearted stories— the ten years of plotting to get two French noble families to stop feuding to get their “uncle” married; convincing Michelangelo to change David’s face before starting on the large model…

“I stole the maquette,” Eliot admits. “The first time and the last.”

“Wait, you know where it is?” Joe asks. “I thought they’d been lost.”

“My other team. Before we started doing the Robin Hood schtick, one of them stole the Second David, twenty years ago now? Thereabouts. We…” he sighs, watching Nile’s horrified face while the others start smirking. “We stole the first one, blackmailed a major insurance company, and left them both in the care of a museum in LA.”

“You left the First David there?” Nicky asks. “Elijah—“

“I switched it out. We already had a fake made; no one was looking real careful on the clean up.”

“Do you keep priceless art in random caves too?”

“That cave isn’t ‘random,’” Andy protests. “I’ve been keeping my stuff there for centuries.”

“ _Andy_.”

“It’s in one of my safe houses. No reason anyone should be anywhere near it until I decide to move it.” Although Alec and Parker might know where that one is. He’d gotten too comfortable in their lives together, didn’t keep his places as separate from them as he should have. Shaking his head to clear it, he meets Joe’s eyes on accident.

Joe gives a tiny nod, his eyes softening. So he’s figured out at least some of it. Great.

Nile must see something, because she fake yawns and stands. “I’m still running on Kabul time, so I’m going to get some sleep.”

They all nod and wish her goodnight, staying at the table, hands wrapped around mugs of tea.

* * *

“Elijah, what have you left undone?” Nicky asks quietly, switching to Genoese. No reason to expose his secrets until he’s ready.

He leans back in his chair, snagging the bottle of vodka left on the counter and pouring a shot into his tea. They all know it won’t do anything for him, but sometimes the act is all that is required.

Nicky watches him, cataloging the changes time has made to his brother. Elijah’s hair is longer— no surprise there, he always hated military cuts— and he’s dressed comfortably in boots-jeans-tee shirt, but most of the jewelry he always wore is missing. He’s deliberately stripped himself down, left the past behind.

Eliot is silent for a long time, glancing up like Nicky were still his confessor— roles they left behind centuries ago. “I wasn’t… a good person, for a long time,” he says quietly, shamefully. “After losing so many fights in the sixties and seventies, I’m not sure I knew how to be. I should have come back here, after I took the first job that was over the line. Or the second, or even the fiftieth. But I never did.”

“Eliot, what did you do?” Joe asks, switching to Norse, Elijah’s mother tongue.

Eliot swallows, shakes his head. “Don’t— don’t ask me yet. If you ask, I’ll tell you and…” Blowing out a breath, he slumps into his chair again. “It doesn’t matter. I got out, eventually started running with a different crew.”

“You love one of them,” Andy says flatly. Like it’s obvious, and maybe it is, to her. “You fell in love. Another fucking love affair. El, what were you _thinking_?”

“We all die for love, Andy. Parker, Alec… They’re still young. They’ll have each other when we kill me off. Let Eliot Spencer rot in some unmarked grave.” He slams back the rest of his tea and pushes away from the table. “I’m gonna get some sleep.”

They all stay silent as he leaves the room, claiming the armchair in the corner of the parlor from the sound of it.

Joe’s foot nudges Nicky’s ankle, seeking comfort in a way they rarely do unless they’re in immediate danger. Nicky taps back, enough to let him know that he’s here, he understands.

It is the curse of all of them— to watch anyone not in their tiny family age and fade. Andy has lost at least one husband in addition to Quynh, Booker’s entire family died before they could convince him to come with them. The grief isn’t new. How could it be, when they’ve lost parents, siblings, their very languages?

“Fuck,” Andy says simply, dropping her chair back onto all four legs and reaching for the vodka.

Nicky pushes his mug toward her, raising an eyebrow at Joe. He shakes his head, barely. Just tea for him. They drink their brother’s sorrow, drowning what he won’t allow himself to grieve.

* * *

Eliot’s eyes snap open at the scrape of the front door, grabbing the knife in the crease of the armchair before he’s even fully awake.

“Sorry,” the new girl— Nile— half whispers. She’s wearing gym shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt, clearly sneaking out for a run before everyone wakes up. “I’ll be back in about an hour.”

Eliot snorts. “Hood up. Do you have any idea how many cameras there are in London?”

“I did my research,” she shoots back, affronted. “And had Copley check my route— minimal cameras.”

“They’re not—“ he shakes his head. “Be careful,” he says instead, reburying the knife between the seat cushion and the arm.

She nods, once. “Yes, sir.”

They both wince and then she’s out the door, pulling it closed behind her with a click.

He’s not going to get any more sleep, no matter how much he wants to just… avoid the next couple weeks. He doesn’t get to run away from what needs to be done. Doesn’t get to push this off on anyone else.

Standing, he stretches and pads into the kitchen, getting the coffee started before staring into the fridge to figure out what he can make for breakfast.

It’s pretty bare, but there’s a couple bell peppers and eggs and some canned tomatoes. They’ll need to restock before they take off, which will probably be in a day or so— he’s not entirely certain why they’re still here as it is.

Familiarity, he supposes, and habit. Andy has always liked this safe house, since they set it up in the mid-eighteenth century— the first time they’d been back in England since the witch trials.

Frowning, he gets a meal started and simmering before claiming the shower and getting ready for the day.

Joe is stirring the pan when Eliot emerges back into the kitchen, running a finger across the spoon and tasting it before reaching for the spices. “You’ve been cooking for Americans too much,” he chides, adding more red pepper flakes and cumin. “Not nearly enough flavor. I have been making this since childhood—”

“And Nile is an American. One used to base living and meals in the field at that. You think she’s had anything not mass produced since her last leave?” Eliot shakes his head. “Bullshit. We had our first tomatoes at the same time, when we were hunting down that conquistador.”

“Stew,” Nicky says from the table, sounding far more awake than he looks. “Before… When she and Andy got to France, we had stew. And I’ve cooked since then.”

Eliot rolls his eyes, topping off his coffee mug and joining Nicky at the table. “My apologies for doubting your abilities in feeding a marine.”

“Soldiers,” Nicky slumps back in his chair, “deserve better than the slop they’ve been eating for the last several centuries.”

Eliot snorts. “I’m not arguing. But it’s a long way from a mass produced mess breakfast to anything we’re gonna make.”

They start bickering, the same arguments they’ve been having for almost as long as they’ve been together, and Eliot relaxes a bit. They’re not the family he’s used to— he catches himself making a joke that only Alec would get or looking for Parker to support his argument— but he’s always known he wouldn’t have them forever.

This is good, allowing him to slowly readjust to this comradeship, bullshitting with his brothers at the table, before…

“Eli?” Joe calls softly in Italian. “Everything alright?”

“Fine.” Eliot brushes him off, standing and pulling the eggs out of the fridge. “Just thinking.” And hurting, but that’s not anything he wants to put on them. Not now, not when this is the longest they’ve spent together since the World Wars. Resolutely, he ignores the look they’re exchanging behind him, carefully cracking eggs into the tomato mixture.

Nicky touches his shoulder in apology when he sits back down and they change subjects, discussing sports for lack of anything else.

* * *

The four older immortals are sitting around the kitchen table when Nile gets back from her run, shaking the rain from her hoodie and shedding it in the hall. Laughing about… something… and speaking yet another language. She thinks this one is related to German, or maybe Dutch, but her head is spinning from too many languages in too little time as it is, so she’s not going to worry about it yet.

If Andy’s right, she’s got few thousand years to figure it out anyway, if she even needs it. This Eliot dude looks familiar, but he’s not on Copley’s wall— he’s not been around for at a hundred and fifty years, possibly longer. Who knows if he’s just going to disappear again.

Joe catches her eye as she walks by the kitchen. “Get warm and come eat,” he says with a jerk of his head. “Eli and I have a bet.”

“My god, _Yusuf_ , we do _not_ ,” Eliot protests before digging for his wallet. “Fine, but I only have… three hundred in euros.”

Nile snorts and nods, ducking down the short hallway to the bedroom she’s sharing with Andy, changing into dry clothes.

Andy pushes a cup of coffee at her as soon as she drags a chair to the table, followed by the sugar. It’s quickly followed by a bowl of tomatoes and eggs and a couple pieces of bread.

Nile huffs a laugh. “You’re betting over Eggs in Purgatory? Really?”

Nicky holds up a finger. “You will get used to it. Food is a favorite.”

“Right.” Nile takes a small bite, just enough to get a feel for it before pushing away from the table and heading towards the fridge. “You picked up the hot sauce for me, right, Joe? Like I asked?”

“Ha!” Joe bursts out. “I was right!” They all start laughing as Joe collects the small pile of cash from the center of the table. “Harissa is on top of the fridge.”

“Wait, you were betting on _me_?”

“Just your spice tolerance,” Andy points out. “Eat your breakfast.”

Nile’s not sure how she feels about that, but feeling overwhelmed is pretty normal these days, so she ignores it, douses her tomatoes and eggs in hot sauce and settles down to stuff herself silly.

They manage to keep their conversations to mostly English this time, with only the occasional slip into Italian or Arabic, although at least once Nicky goes on a rant in something that’s not quite Italian— Genoan maybe? He predates Dante so maybe?— about smugglers.

Or maybe Venetians. She’s not sure. Hell, they might be one and the same, she makes no pretense at knowing eleventh century slang.

“Nile and Eli will need new papers,” Andy cuts across. “No matter how we get across the channel.” She pauses and frowns at Eliot. “Unless your partners—“

He shakes his head, already mourning them Nile thinks. “He did, but… he knows all those. If I use one of them, he’ll chase after me.”

“I’ll take them,” Nicky says. “You and Joe find transport— a ferry, I think. Less security that way.”

“I hate England,” Andy sighs, but nods. “Once we get clear, we need to find a job too. Practice.”

“Uh, no,” Nile says flatly, setting her fork down with a clatter. “Not while you’ve still got a barely healed GSW in your fucking side. You’re not doing a damn thing except resting and healing. _Maybe_ PT in a week or two.”

“What?”

Oops, guess they hadn’t gotten around to filling in Eliot on that little tidbit. She should probably feel bad for dropping it like that, but it’s not like Joe and Nicky were going to. She glares at Andy, who glares right back. “You’re not invincible anymore. Going out in the field when you’re hurt? Will just screw everyone.”

“I’m fine!” Andy snaps, stretching, like that’s going to prove anything.

Eliot snorts. “I can see that,” he points out. He gets quiet when he’s angry and Nile files that away for later— more like Nicky than Joe. “Turn to the side,” he orders.

She does, rushing it and unable to hide the slight hitch. And if Nile can see it after only about a week, then the guys will certainly be able to.

Eliot breaks out swearing in that not!German language. It’s long, and impressive, even if Nile can’t understand most of it. She’s pretty sure her Sergeant in basic would be impressed too, and he’d been the best curser she’d ever seen.

“Enough,” Joe says quietly with a slight growl. “We don’t choose when it ends.”

Eliot growls back, but shuts up after a glance at Nicky. “Let’s move then. Feels like my ass is hanging out in the breeze.”

Nile starts shoveling in her breakfast, trying to get it down before the invisible timer goes off and they leave without her. Eliot grimaces, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a hair tie and pulling his hair back. A quick ponytail, some thick rimmed glasses that he pulls from somewhere and a shift in posture and…

“How’d you do that?” Nile asks, gesturing at him with a wave of her hand. “Did you spend some time with the CIA or some shit?”

The _harmless_ tired professor standing at the door, a backpack over his shoulder just tilts his head. “It’s important to be able to disappear, Ms. Freeman.” His American accent is gone, replaced with the barest hint of Welsh accent. “Particularly in the circles I’ve been traveling in.”

Nicky chuckles, spouts off something in Italian and gets to his feet, heading for the bedrooms. Nile looks down and decides her outfit— jeans, boots, t-shirt and a jacket will be nondescript enough next to a professor and… Nicky, who could never look harmless, she doesn’t think, but then, three minutes ago, she didn’t think Eliot could pull it off either.

Andy points her fork at him, grinning. “You’re going to have to teach us all that, you know.”

Something sad happens in his eyes, Nile isn’t sure how to describe it, before it gets covered up with tired professor again. “Sure thing, boss. Once we’re clear.”

There’s something there, something deep and hurting, that Nile barely got a glimpse of and she’s not sure Andy saw at all. Which is… weird.

Bundling her braids into a quick knot, she scrubs down her dishes and still manages to be waiting at the door before Nicky’s ready.

“It’s the military, kid.” Eliot crosses his arms, leaning against the wall with his eyes half-closed. “You’ll grow out of it.”

“You didn’t,” Nile points out.

“I was… old when I went in this last time. Only about twenty-five, thirty years ago? Plenty of time to be stuck in my ways.”

“Bet your trainers _loved_ you.”

He shrugs. “Nice part about regular army— they’ll ignore you as long as you’re competent enough. Not much of that personality rebuilding they do in the Marines.”

“Don’t listen to him, Nile,” Joe calls from the kitchen. “Elijah’s got that military discipline bullshit ground into his bones. Ask him about Mexico in ‘10.”

They both laugh as Nicky finally emerges, brushing past them into the kitchen where he murmurs something to Joe. And then they’re out the door, following tiny alleys and smaller streets in what Nile guesses is an attempt to stay off as many cameras as possible.

It reminds her of the cities and towns in Afghanistan during her deployment, cramped streets that weave wildly in a thousand different directions under a thousand years worth of history (Although, she supposes, a good portion of it is only about five hundred, the rest of it burned and buried.)

Nicky gestures them to a small coffee shop, “Wait there,” and then disappears into the crowd.

* * *

He thinks he catches a glimpse of Eliot once, or his algorithms do anyway, but when Alec reviews the footage, he doesn’t see it. And then he thinks about whoever was wiping footage from Merrick as fast as Alec could download it and…

London has the most cameras of any city in the world, all he has to do is backtrack.

Five minutes and he has the camera in the phone of someone in a random coffee shop, conveniently pointed at the exact corner he knew Eliot would pick. And there he is, bent over a notebook with a young black woman.

Something of El’s lessons over the years must have stuck, because she’s… freshly ex-military. Not even comfortable out of uniform yet fresh.

Another few minutes of work and he has her records pulled up and it’s like looking into a mirror. Admittedly, the mirror is about eighty years younger than him, but close enough.

Nile Freeman, corporal, KIA two weeks ago with a knife to the throat. And looking pretty damn healthy sitting in a London coffee shop, a quarter of the world away from either place he would expect her, and chatting with his missing boyfriend.

That’s one down. Still no sign of Parker, but he’s never been able to find her if she didn’t want to be found. It’s enough of a reason to start heading towards London. He can be there in a day. And he’s narrowed down the search to just one city.

* * *

Sterling has been standing next to the wreckage every day for a week. Parker thinks he’s waiting for her to show up, but she’s not sure why. She’d barely begun to start planning to take down Merrick— wasn’t sure how to sell a miracle to a pharmaceutical company— so the company had been on the back burner, waiting for the pieces to click together.

Instead, someone else took him out. And then someone else spilled all the dirty corporate secrets all across the internet.

Hanging upside down in the warehouse, fifteen feet above Sterling’s head, she ponders what she knows, the variables, and the unknowns.

The puzzle has to fit somehow, but it feels like she only has half the middle pieces.

Abruptly, she flips right side up and climbs back to the ceiling, drifting along the beams until she’s at the window and outside.

Finding missing pieces is Alec’s job, but she doesn’t want him anywhere near this. Which means finding Eliot and making it his job.

* * *

They’ve not seen Sophie in years, not face to face anyway. They still pass cards near the holidays, occasionally trade apartments or art or safe houses, but nothing except ships in the night.

It felt right for a couple years, while they were still trying to figure out how they worked as three and two instead of five, but by then the pattern had been set. Just as well— it’s a lot easier to pretend he’s aging at the same rate as everyone else when she’s only hearing his voice or seeing him on a pixelated screen.

Except now he’s got a brand new immortal sitting across from him in a busy coffee shop and no idea how to teach her to be someone else from the first principles.

He huffs a laugh, staring down into his coffee before pulling a notebook from his bag, more as a prop than anything else. “How you doin’, kid?”

Nile tilts her head, eerily reminiscent of Parker. “Oh, I’m peachy. Died, got kidnapped, got the _shit_ beat outta me, died some more, rescued the folks who kidnapped me, and now I’m sitting next to some white dude who’s never had a haircut.”

“Busy couple of weeks.” He lets her irritation roll over him, ignoring it. He gets it, even centuries later. “Well, I’m not the one who kidnapped you or that you needed to rescue. If you’ve got questions, now’s a good time to ask ‘em.”

“Why don’t you work with them?” Nile asks, taking a long drink of her latte, her eyes dancing around the cafe.

“We’re still people, Nile. I couldn’t stand working with Seb, with his constant grief. A job went bad, I couldn’t get past it, so I took off. We’re not meant to be alone,” he glances up to make sure that she’s following him. “But some of us can manage it a lot better and for longer than others.”

“Andy.”

“Should be alone the least. Book too. Yusuf? Nick? As long as they have each other, they can weather any storm. Me?” Eliot shrugs. “Last few years have been easier, since I found my team.” He stumbles over it— by the end of the week, he’s not going to have a team. Not going to have partners either. “But uh, I didn’t lack for company before then, even if they had a nasty habit of dying every fifty-sixty years.”

She giggles before glancing around. Once some of the military leeches out of her spine, she’ll be good for them, and he suspects she’ll already make him work to put her to the ground. “So, once we get these IDs, then what?”

“We go over to Europe, probably work our way south, maybe Africa? Find someplace quiet and unobserved, and then start figuring out where you fit in. That’s the fun part.”

“And the other part?”

“We’ll start picking up jobs again, figuring out where five swords can do the most good.” And he’ll bury his grief and heartbreak the way they always have, in violence and blood.

Nile looks like she wants a better, more detailed answer, one he can’t give, but Nicky rushes in before Eliot can figure out what to say.

“Come with me.” And the fucker steals Eliot’s coffee with a wink, sauntering away.

Eliot watches him for a few steps before shoving his notebook into his bag. “Wait five minutes, then follow us. Second alley to the right.” It’s not how he would prefer to start teaching her these skills, but something is going on if Nicolò is acting like this.

Sliding an arm around Nicky’s waist, he steals back his coffee before brushing his lips next to his ear. “What?” He breathes out.

Nicky twitches his head, not here. Which… ok. Normally Nicky’s all for fighting first if they’re in a tight spot.

Or he was. Maybe that’s changed over the past couple hundred years. Eliot’s already noticed other things that have, maybe this is just another way he can’t fit in with his family again.

He fights to keep a besotted smile on his face as they stroll down the sidewalk, listening to Nicky ranting about mono-cultures and bananas and avocados in Italian— he always has been the best of them at providing a steady distraction that allows the others to watch and listen without looking like it.

Eliot watches around them, for tails, for anyone taking too much interest, for anything to explain what has Nicolò so tense, but there’s nothing.

* * *

Whatever El’s got himself tied up in, it’s nasty. Alec is five layers deep in CIA grade encryption and there’s no end in sight. Which should not be on some randomly privately owned server on the outskirts of London.

Terrorists is the only thing he can think of for why Eliot would abandon them like this. A threat against Alec and Parker, serious enough to force Eliot’s hand without telling them.

Which is just stupid, they had that fight years ago. There’s nothing they can’t do if they’re working together, threats against civilians or themselves. And taking Parker but not Alec?

Alec’s the one _who can’t die_. What the fuck is Eliot thinking?

His rational brain reminds him, somewhere behind endless algorithms and worry morphing into anger, that he never told them that he was born in the twenties, bought it the first time in World War II, then again in Korea, before deciding that he was never dying in a war again.

Information has always been his best weapon, so he hoards it. Taking a deep breath, he dives back into the code, searching for whatever threat they have so he can neutralize it.

Then he can call his loves back home.

* * *

Michel barely glances up when Nicky returns with Eliot in tow, three screens showing databases that Nicky can barely understand. The ones necessary for creating new identities, he assumes, with a fourth dedicated to the security cameras dotting the neighborhood around them. “You do not pay me enough to create two from nothing,” he complains.

“We can always not pay you at all,” Nicky shoots back with a glance at Elijah. “We know other information brokers.”

“But none of them are—“ Michel cuts himself off as he spins around. “Nikolas, no violence is necessary.”

“Who said violence?” Nicky looks at Elijah who is smirking.

“I may have skipped some details in our years apart,” Elijah admits. “Which is part of the reason I need to die.”

“You’re getting out of the game?” Michel asks, curiosity warring with fear on his face. “The crew you’ve been running with got too bloodthirsty for _Eliot Spencer_?”

Elijah’s voice is ice cold when he responds, his Americanized accent disappeared into the frozen North where he was born. “And what do you know of my crew, Michel Androvich? You think it means anything?”

“Ford will raze the planet rather than let you go. He is no better than Moreau.”

Eliot scoffs, shakes his head. “Your information is out of date, by years.” Crossing his arms, he takes a step back, glowering, but jerking his head at Nicky.

“New identifications for him and another,” Nicky says quietly, the velvet glove to Eliot’s steel. Normally, it’s Joe backing him, but they’ve all played every role over the years. And this will be the last time they use Michel— he knows too much, and Nicky is well aware of how cheap his loyalty can be bought.

Michel swallows, glances at Eliot then Nicky, and turns back to his computer. “Name?”

“Jonas Stein, German.” He pauses for a moment while Michel types frantically. “One of the small towns south of Hannover.”

“And your partner?”

Nicky jumps in before Eliot can say anything else. “American woman, black. Amanda…” He raises an eyebrow.

“Banks.”

Michel nods nervously, typing frantically while a printer on the desk warms up. “I’ll need her here for the photos. Everything else will be ready in a couple hours.”

“Take my photo first,” Eliot orders, moving to stand in front of the bare wall, eyes hard. Michel takes a few shots before being happy with one. Eliot nods, already slipping back out of the apartment. He’s… different than he was, but then, they all are. Perhaps that is not what he should be focusing on.

Nile softly knocks a few minutes later, her shoulders still hunched against the cold and her eyes worried. They should have warned her more, given her more of a chance. But this is part of her life now, as uncomfortable as it is.

“El?” Nicky asks, when she comes in alone.

She shakes her head. “Outside.”

Michel blusters at them, directing her to the blank wall, to take her photo and whatever else is necessary for identification these days. It was much easier even fifty years ago, before photos were present on everything.

Nile copies him once Michel has what he needs, standing against the back wall with her arms loose at her sides, occasionally twitching as if she’s thinking about what might need to be done. Eventually though, Michel passes him a pair of envelopes in exchange for yet another envelope of cash.

Nicky huffs, following Nile out the door as Michel is crass enough to double check the amount while they’re still there. The door locks behind them.

“Nice guy,” Nile says.

“He serves his purpose. Normally, we can do our own forgeries, but…”

“Booker. Yeah, I figured.” She sighs. “So we’re set to get out of here? Gotta say, all these cameras are making me nervous.”

“We need to close up the safe house, but then yes.” He looks around for Eliot, but doesn’t see him. Odd.

* * *

**THEN** :

They say there’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole, but Alec isn’t sure when he prayed less. There’s just no time for prayer when he is trying not to get shot while driving ambulances and supply trucks to and from the front.

Fucking France. He never wanted to come here and now, he’s here to liberate it. From the fucking Nazis.

He grumbles as he sees a new crater in the road ahead, slowing and easing to one side of the road. The jimmies can handle that sort of hole, but not the old trucks used to haul supplies and troops. Breaking an axle will put him even more behind.

And possibly get him shot, although this area has been pretty far from the front the past few weeks.

Slowing to a crawl, he carefully edges around the crater, getting a pretty good look at the muddy water in the bottom, two foot deep if it’s an inch.

Looking around, he lets out a low whistle. This would be a good place for an ambush, if someone wanted…

A German fucker pops up, out of the water and mud, grabbing Alec by the arm and dragging him out of the driver’s seat.

Alec scrabbles for his pistol as he lands in the muck, his fingers slipping on stiff leather as a second German appears out of nowhere. The first one laughs, says something, and shoots Alec in the chest.

When he wakes up, he’s face-down in the mud, halfway out of the hole. He takes a few breaths, pushing the panic and screaming aside for a few minutes while he stumbles to the woods a few yards away, trying to get under cover before someone comes around.

He’s dead. He has to be. Point blank range, and he heard the shot. Unless they were screwing around, shooting blanks or something and he fainted, he’s _dead_.

Except he’s not. (It’s possible being a ghost is just as real as being alive, but that doesn’t… he can touch shit. He’s not a ghost.)

Shakily, Alec unbuttons his uniform, looking down at his intact torso. His thumb catches on a pair of holes, just left of center, below the pocket flap of his shirt. Shit. There’s no way that didn’t kill him. And yet, here he is, holding onto his sanity by his fingertips, alive and miraculously whole.

And marching back to camp on foot, unless he wants to be stuck in the French countryside. There’s no way to get back to Chicago without the army’s help or a lot more money than he has access to. Really, his situation here is a lot more sustainable anyway, despite getting shot at on a regular basis and dealing with commanders who’d rather spit on him than listen.

Ok, so that’s the plan then. Get back to camp, pretend this never happened, complete his hitch.

A squad catches up with him on the road, five of them, dirty and exhausted, trudging the same way he is. They must be some sort of special unit, one of them has an accent Alec can’t identify and another must be part of the French Resistance given his accent. A third communicates solely in grunts near as Alec can tell.

Whoever they are, they’ve been working together for a long time, half-sentences and references to other places and events tossed around him in cheerful chatter, although he doesn’t miss that at least two of them are on guard at all times, scanning the road and fields around them.

“Ah, is that your truck?” The other black guy asks, pointing towards a truck driven mostly off the road.

“Looks it,” Alec responds. “Hard to tell from here.”

“El, Nick, go,” the lieutenant orders. Tall and slender, he’s carrying an axe on top of his pack, but then, the others have things that look suspiciously like swords hanging from their waists.

Alec isn’t going to question it. Not if they’re going to help him get his truck back.

The taciturn one and the one with the accent Alec can’t place nod, shifting their weapons around and loping off into the trees. They’ve completely disappeared in less than a minute.

French accent— Book?— shifts his own pack around, making sure his gun rides easily on his hip. “Boss, you want me to—“

“Stay here. We’re just as likely to be ambushed as they are.”

Alec grimaces, feeling distinctly useless with only his pistol.

“Relax,” the lieutenant says quietly. “We’ll get you back to your unit safe. We’re good at this.”

A few minutes later, the sharp retort of gunfire draws their attention, and the four of them break out into a jog. They hear a shot and the Africanguy perks up, grinning. “A day’s smoke ration that the Germans didn’t even draw their guns.”

“Joe, you’re insane. You’re on.”

Alec thinks about pointing out that the pitch of the guns was German, not American. But a special unit might not have American guns, or possibly have a combination. Nothing else about this group has been regulation, not how they’re marching, not how informal they are, not how out of uniform they are. Why on earth would their guns be?

El is dragging a body away from the truck when they finally reach it, dropping it into a pile with two others in the ditch by the road. He nods towards the pile of weapons that’s stacked on the hood. “Only three here. Supplies are pretty low, I don’t think they have support.”

The lieutenant nods, glancing around. “Nick?”

El’s eyes go hard, sliding to Alec and back. “Getting cleaned up. You know how he is with mud.” He jerks a thumb behind them, towards a small bank of trees that might mean water.

Joe drops his pack near the truck and takes off towards the stream, his rifle across his back and sword at his hip.

El and Book roll their eyes before restarting clean up. Alec glances at the lieutenant and moves to the truck, popping open the cab to see how bad any damage is. It’s not too bad, mud everywhere and his carefully stacked letter bags upset, but nothing that can’t be cleaned up.

“Why did they stop?”

Alec smirks, checks the wires on the underside of the ignition. “Don’t know why they stopped, but they turned it off and couldn’t get it restarted. Guess they never stole a car before.”

Lieutenant chuckles and sighs. “Alright. Book, help get things ready to go. We’ll catch a ride into camp and then regroup.”

Alec thinks he’s not supposed to notice how the three of them are doing their best to distract him from wherever Joe and Nick disappeared. That’s fine, their distraction works well enough to hide his attempts since he realized that the bullet holes in his shirt are gaping open, blood staining the surrounding fabric.

They’re all hiding things. He doesn’t want to know their secrets, he would just rather avoid them knowing his.

It’s past dusk by the time he has the truck running again, the back reorganized, and the others loaded in. Book claims the passenger seat up front, his rifle balanced in his lap as Alec carefully navigates the roads back to camp. He can hear the four in back chatting, but not about what, the engine covering the words until they’re just a low drone.

Book stays silent next to him, on edge until they reach camp, and then he relaxes all at once. Reaching up, he pounds his fist on the frame of the truck before jumping out of the still moving car. He waves, waits a few seconds for the others to join him, and then they disappear to the maze of tents and buildings.

Alec tears his eyes away from the mirror and focuses on figuring out how he’s going to phrase this afternoon in the paperwork.

* * *

**NOW** :

Eliot’s phone buzzes in his pocket as he finishes some less than legal shopping. “Whoever this is, you should _not_ have this number.”

“Then you should have better sources,” an unfamiliar voice says. Eliot automatically starts categorizing the accent, trying to narrow down his long list of enemies. “As it is, I have a job for the great Eliot Spencer.”

“I don’t do that anymore,” he points out flatly. It's been over ten years, _eventually_ the networks used to find him will figure that out and stop passing his contact information around. Not that anyone should have a phone number that’s less than thirty-six hours old, but he’s seen Hardison do more with less.

“Ms. Kroy looks well,” she says lightly. “Enjoying the sunshine and shopping in Sicily. I don’t suppose that’s a surprise.”

An odd threat, to go after Sophie instead of Parker or Alec, but she’s also the most exposed. In the background, he hears street noise, too generic to be of any use in figuring out where his caller is. “What do you want?”

“A job, as I said. I’m sending you an address. As long as you meet me there in three hours, Ms. Kroy will come to no harm.”

Three hours, so she’s working with a team. So’s he, but does she know that? “Three hours,” he confirms. “Anything else?”

“Tell no one. I’ll know if you try to trace this number. After all, what will they think if you get shot in front of a Tesco?” She hangs up, a text arriving within seconds with an address that’s halfway across London, in one of the less prestigious neighborhoods on the south side of the Thames.

Fuck, he hates London.

Frowning, he ducks into the next alley, wishing he could call Alec and Parker in for backup. But it needs to be a clean break, no leftover strings to pull. Breaking their hearts years ago would have been better, now is good enough. He walked out in the middle of the night with nothing more than the clothes on his back. It’ll have to do. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to do it years from now, this already hurts.

Holding his poker face in place, he shoots a quick text to Joe— running an errand, go to ground, will catch up in Düsseldorf in three-four days— and hopes that they don’t come looking. That _no one_ comes looking. It’s easier to do these sorts of jobs alone.

That done, he starts meandering towards the meeting site, taking his time, backtracking on public transportation to ensure any cameras that do see him are useless, going through everything he knows about losing a tail.

The street looks a little shabby, post-war construction with flats above the shops. Hasn’t been gentrified yet, but London prices being what they are, it’s only a matter of time.

He hates the coffee shop as soon as he walks in— over-priced coffee and cakes that are too fancy to be served by the slice, with minimalist decor that makes him want to scream. Instead, he forks over a few pounds for a cup of black coffee and claims the table in the back corner, away from the windows. Let whoever is trying to pull his strings have their back to the window.

Eliot pulls out his phone a couple of times, leaving it locked each time. He can’t warn Sophie, not without putting her in (more) danger, just like he can’t warn Alec and Parker or Andy, Joe, and Nicky. He’s the weak link, taking the punishment because that’s what he can do.

A middle aged white man sits down at his table, holding a manila folder and a cup of coffee. “You actually came.” London accent, solidly middle class clothes, no guns, Eliot doesn’t think, but knows his way around violence without them. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

He doesn’t offer a name and Eliot doesn’t ask, mentally dubbing him Mr. Johnson and carrying on.

Eliot raises an eyebrow. “Your… associate made a pretty convincing argument for why I should.”

“She does know how to motivate people such as yourself.” He waits for a response before continuing, “To business.”

Eliot grunts, waiting for him to get to the point. He forces himself to stay impassive, to not walk away or punch the man across from him.

“There’s a transfer happening at this address this evening. My associate requires the materials being moved.”

Retrieval. That’s something at least. Not murdering a political enemy or anything like that. “What’s the material in question?”

“Biological samples.” He waves his hand, brushing over details that could be the difference between life and death for any mortal who took this job. “You don’t need to know more than that.”

Eliot tilts his head, taking the folder, flipping through it quickly. Address and times, names of the main players, a… truly impressive payment amount. Closing the folder, Eliot jerks his head into a nod. “Half now?”

Johnson holds out his phone, where a transfer is already pulled up, just waiting for Eliot to enter his account number. The number he enters has an automated routine associated with it— splitting any deposits into smaller, harder to track, amounts and spinning them through half a dozen shell accounts before being deposited into Eliot’s actual accounts.

Alec will see it, but there’s nothing to be done for that right now. He hasn’t had a chance to set up new accounts yet.

The phone flashes a confirmation of the funds transfer and Eliot stands, scooping up the folder and his empty coffee cup. “We’re done here. I’ll contact you when the job’s done.” Marching out the door, he ignores the cheerful farewell from the barista and randomly picks a direction to get lost in.

He’s been walking for nearly thirty minutes, taking random turns down side streets and alleys, before Parker finds him, dropping from a rundown fire escape into a narrow alley in front of him.

“You don’t do that anymore,” she says quietly, crossing her arms. “You _promised_.”

“What are you doing here, Parker?”

She shakes her head, looking as angry as he’s ever seen her. “No. You don’t do that anymore. So why are you?”

“I’m not…” he starts. “I’m doing my job, Parker,” he says with a sigh. “I protect the team. They were going to kill Sophie, I can’t just—“

“And taking off without a word? What was that?”

“Parker, I’m not talking about this with you. I’m doing what the job requires, getting the target off everyone’s backs.”

“You aren’t coming back,” she says quietly. “We agreed until our dying day and you… you’re leaving.” He can hear the hurt, the confusion, and it rips at him, tearing into him with all the viciousness of Andy’s labrys.

“I’m not,” he agrees, near silently. “I don’t want you and Alec caught up in this, I’ve spent too much time with you as it is.” He won’t lie to her, even if that would be the fastest way to end this. They’ve all had too many people lie to them and walk out, he won’t be the next one. “I can’t tell you why, just trust me.”

“Trust you.”

“You can’t be a part of this… it’s so much more than a questionable job and a bullet to Sophie’s head. I can’t, _won’t_ , put you and Alec in danger.”

She huffs, but her shoulders are defeated. She’s going to let him go, let him disappear into the vast underground where people of their skill level live. He wants to apologize, but there’s nothing he can say that will mean anything.

A truck blares it’s horn on the street, people shouting in traffic and when he turns back, Parker is gone.

* * *

He’s trying to hide it from her, but something is bothering Nicky. Probably the disappearance of Eliot, not that Nile would know anything about that. He keeps checking his phone though, like he’s expecting a text or call to explain where he’s gone.

Now that he’s gone, Nile knows what the look on his face was when he grabbed her from the alley and sent her up to the forger’s flat. Resignation and heartbreak. Coming back to this team meant losing his other team and partners. (She’s not sure why he’s coming back now, but she’s also not sure how he found them again. He’s been gone for a long time though, she knows that, the only one of them that can function alone.)

“Maybe he went to say goodbye to his other team,” she offers quietly, standing at Nicky’s shoulder on the subway. “He’d been with them for a long time, right?”

“Yes.” But he doesn’t say anything more, just checks his phone again before shoving it decisively into his pocket. “Come, we’re running behind.”

Getting back to the safe house is a whirlwind of camera avoidance and light shopping, leaving them encumbered by shopping bags filled with non-perishables— restocking the safe house, Nile assumes, for the next time they need a place in London proper.

Joe and Andy are already back when they arrive, shoving spare clothes into beat up duffels and backpacks. Nile starts stocking the shelves in the kitchen without a word. She might not have done this precise thing before, but she can grasp the basics— leave it as well stocked and clean as possible— without being told. Quietly, as she listens to the others bicker in a combination of Italian and Arabic, she starts reciting the names of things in Pashto, just like she did in her high school German classes.

“Catch,” Andy calls playfully when Nile emerges from the kitchen, throwing a sheathed sword at her.

Nile catches it with a curse, dropping the bag of produce to the floor. “What the fuck, Andy?”

“Time to go, kid. You got everything?”

“You know I have no idea how to use this, right?” Nile hefts it, bending down to scoop up the apples and bananas. “So me carrying it makes… no sense.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Not without practice,” Nile mutters. She shoulders past Andy to grab the bag with her shit, what little she has. A few changes of clothes, charging cables, her new IDs. Easily replaced if the bag has to be left behind. Somehow she has no doubt that the other’s bags are the same, the only necessities they wear on their bodies and never, ever, take off. Or are stored in an abandoned mine somewhere in France, out of sight and forgotten.

“Let’s go,” Nicky says quietly, not quite covering up his worry even with Joe at his shoulder.

She’d seen a bit of that at Merrick and at the pub after, Joe running his mouth while Nicky stayed mostly silent. She’s glad she never took it as gospel truth. He’s less likely to shoot off, yes, but more likely to hold a grudge too. More likely to worry about anyone in their little family who isn’t present.

Now she wonders how he keeps moving with Quynh drowning and Booker exiled and Eliot missing.

“Shotgun!” Joe happily calls as they head down the stairs, Nicky moving to the driver’s seat.

Andy huffs beside her, but doesn’t say anything about it, just dropping her bag into the trunk along with her axe. “He forgets he gets car sick,” she whispers with a grin. “By the time we’re out of the city, he’ll be begging to trade into the back seat.”

Nile grins. “Nice to know you’re not all perfect.”

“No, far from it, kid.”

The sedan is cramped with all of them, not because they have too much stuff but because they’re all so damn tall that it's next to impossible to have enough leg room. Nile grimaces when Joe backs his seat into her shins, pulling her feet back further before giving up and banging on his seat back. “Watch it!”

He apologizes, moving the seat forward a bare couple of inches, just enough that her knees aren’t going to kill her. Nicky gives them another couple of moments to adjust and then he’s off like a shot, driving too fast in London traffic and threatening collision with every quarter mile.

Andy’s asleep before they get to the highway, somehow, despite Joe’s cursing and Nicky’s laughter and Nile isn’t that far behind.

Joe looks positively green by the time they reach Dover, white knuckles gripping the car door. Nile would laugh, but eventually they’re going to figure out how much she hates flying and she’d rather not give Joe motive as well as ammunition for teasing her.

They snack on the fruit she brought while waiting on the ferry, settling into an uncomfortable silence as they look over the water. She should let it be, but she can’t, not with them acting like it’s their own graves they’re looking at.

“Tell me about Eliot?” She asks, tossing Joe another apple now that he’s regained his color. “Why’s he not being hanging out with you all?”

“He had already been alone many years when we came across him. We dreamed of him, but the dreams felt like any other dream, not the nightmares like you have. He was, heh, living on the outskirts of a small village, keeping the wolves away.” Nicky wrinkles his nose, pressing his hand against Joe’s where it rests between them on the car hood.

“It was a bad winter,” Andy offers. “The village was barely hanging on, the wolves growing braver every day. We stumbled in on the heels of an early blizzard, barely better off than the villagers or Eliot.”

“Cold… is not a good way to die.” Joe takes a bite of the apple before leaning his head back to catch more of the sun. “People say its like going to sleep, but only if you’re going to sleep in a hornet’s nest, stinging pain as your nerves misfire.”

“A hornet’s nest?” Nile frowns. “What were you doing on top of a hornet’s nest?”

“We were very tired, and it was very hot. The tree was the only shade for miles.” Nicky shrugs, looking almost smug. “I did warn him of the possibility.”

“Right before you dropped off your horse and fell asleep where you stood.”

Nile lets them distract her with bickering over who’s fault it is that Joe threw himself on top of a nest to take a nap. If they don’t want to tell her, they’re welcome to their secrets. She’s pretty sure that Eliot has heard of the concept of privacy and holds onto it pretty tightly.

“At any rate,” Andy cuts across eventually. “The four of us had nowhere to be and no real rush to travel in the winter, so we stayed.” Her lips turn down, remembering something else.

Nile opens her mouth to ask, but Nicky, behind Andy, gives a tiny shake to his head. Don’t push, that look says, and she can read it clear enough. Instead, she pops open the trunk and rummages for the first aid kit. “Lie down in the back seat, let me see what’s going on with your side.”

Nicky and Joe wander off a little bit, staying within sight, but far enough away that they won’t see anything. Nile wonders at their sudden prudishness before pushing it out of mind.

Andy grunts as she pulls up her shirt. “I don’t know why we have to keep going through this.”

“Because a week and a half ago, you promised me centuries if not millennia, and now you’ve got less than sixty years. So yeah, we’re going to keep making sure this isn’t infected, and I’m going to keep you benched if you’re hurt, and you can expect to see a repeat of this every time it’s more than a fucking scrape or bruise.” Andy looks like she’s going to protest, but Nile cuts her off. “Joe and Nicky will back me on this, at least. Probably Book and Eli if I have to drag them into it.”

The bandages are still white, and Andy is moving easier today than she was a couple days ago, so the worst is probably behind them.

“If it’s my time, it’s my time.”

“That was before the advent of antibiotics, thanks. You’re staying alive for years and you’re spending them with us.” Nile pulls down Andy’s shirt and offers her hand to pull her back up.

Andy stays quiet, but pulls Nile near, cupping the back of her neck and leaning their foreheads together. “Thanks, kid.”

Nile grins at her. “Besides, someone’s gonna have to teach me how to keep these boys in line.”

“You’re doing pretty good already.”

Joe and Nicky wander back over, Joe with a small shopping bag in one hand. “The ferry is starting to load, we should get in line.”

Nile nods, stretching one last time before ducking back into the car. Time to get this show back on the road.

* * *

Eliot doesn’t dare go back to the safe house or even text the others again. They’ll be okay either way, and really, he needs this time.

He doesn’t see Parker again as he criss-crosses the city, but sometimes he thinks he feels her watching. She doesn’t try to stop him, so he ignores it. He’s not doing anything that’s going to point towards the others, so it’s just… killing time.

He memorizes the faces and names in Johnson’s folder— a doctor in bioengineering on one side, some black market medical assholes on the other. And then there’s Johnson’s, and now Eliot’s, employer, wanting whatever the goods are. Considering the number of zeros on Eliot’s paycheck, whatever it is is worth billions. More money than he’s played for in a long time.

London is like any other city, littered with hardware stores and everything else he’ll need. A few liters of petrol, a couple of cleaning agents, a battery, and some wiring and he has everything he needs to solve both his current problems.

* * *

Eliot fucks up around mid-day, passing in front of the same camera twice within thirty minutes. From there, Alec follows him, jumping from street camera to camera as he climbs into a taxi and heads towards one of the old industrial parts of town, chock full of the sort of half full warehouses they spend so much of their lives in.

Alec could get there in time to put a stop to it, and everything in him urges him to do that. Except he still doesn’t know why Eliot bolted, why he’s using protocols and accounts he’s never acknowledged once Alec created them.

Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark and the only way to trace its stench is to let this play out. No matter how much he hates it and how much it feels like a trap.

Instead, he gets to work backtracking where the money came from. He can be patient, can wait until the right time, but someone is going to pay. And when it’s time, hellfire and brimstone.

* * *

Parker visits one of her safe houses, running along the rooftops like that demented chimney sweep from one of those movies Alec likes to avoid the cameras. No one has cameras up here, and it’s faster than trying to navigate the subway-tube-underground or catching a taxi.

Slipping into one of her most comfortable harnesses, she hangs upside down in the attic, ponytail brushing the floor beneath her as she assesses, pushing her emotions away like the inconvenient distractions that they are.

She can’t do anything about Eliot breaking up with her and Alec. That’s his call and they long ago agreed to not steal or con each other’s feelings. (She wishes she knew what she did wrong— it had to be her, Alec gets this shit— so she can promise not to do it again, but that’s _not_ ignoring the emotions.)

She can do something about the people blackmailing Eliot into working for them. Paycheck or not, he wouldn’t have agreed to this job without Sophie being in danger. So: get Sophie away from whoever has her.

Parker pulls out a fresh burner phone, dialing Sophie’s latest number by touch.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” Parker says, suddenly at a loss for words. She’s not good at this, code words and hidden conversations are Alec’s job. “I… Remember that first meeting with Chaos? And the _bad_ pudding?”

Sophie is silent for a long moment, the already muted background noises getting even quieter— moving inside?— “Just before we went to the art gallery, of course. I hope you’re not telling me to expect another present.”

“It’s not from Chaos.” Parker bites her lip. “It was a surprise to us as well.” How much more can she say? Are they watching Sophie or do they have her phone bugged too?

“I’ll have to call the exterminator when I get home,” Sophie says with a sigh. “I wish they wouldn’t deliver such things without prior authorization.”

“I’m doing what I can to stop delivery, but you know El, he always charges ahead without waiting.”

Sophie sucks in a breath, and Parker can almost hear the puzzle pieces clicking. “I had no idea it was that big of a present,” she murmurs. “I’ll head back to Derbyshire as soon as I can get a flight.”

Parker has no idea where Derbyshire is, but it sounds English and small and that’s really all she cares about right now. “I’ll send someone to pick you up. So don’t worry about a car.”

They fumble through goodbyes before Parker hangs up, automatically disassembling the phone, removing the battery before destroying the SIM card.

Now she just needs to get Sterling to believe her.

And then figure out where Eliot’s retrieval job is happening. Get him out. Decipher human emotions. (Figure out if the panic that keeps prickling her skin is her own or the dream she had last night.)

* * *

Across the channel, they drive north, switching off drivers when Joe needs a break, until Andy is the one driving as they cross into Germany. Nile’s phone tells her that if they were taking the highways and major roads, this trip would take about four hours, but they don’t. Instead, they manage to stretch it out to over six.

It makes good operational sense and Nile doesn’t particularly care one way or the other. It gives her time to badger the others into explaining what, exactly, they were doing in Sao Paulo in 1834– there was a revolution around then, wasn’t there?

She dozes off somewhere in the Netherlands, after Andy takes over from Nicky and as they turn back south.

She doesn’t slide into a nightmare this time. Instead, all she sees are computer screens in different colors, flashes of frantic typing and black and white security feeds. He feels… like he wants to panic but is forcing himself to stay calm, doing whatever it is that he’s doing. Nile can’t see well enough.

Not that it matters— it’s not drowning and it’s not her own death, so she’ll take it. Anything is better than Quynh right now.

She doesn’t think she jolts when she wakes up, but Joe’s hand is on her shoulder anyway, squeezing. “Nightmare?”

Shaking her head, she reaches for a water bottle. “Nah. Just… weird. Information overload I think. Or my brain has decided to filter everything through computer metaphors.”

The dashboard provides enough light that Nile can see Andy’s eyebrow raise. “Computers?”

“Yeah, like…” Nile tilts her head back against the headrest. “I was searching for someone, something, but I couldn’t actually change the information I was getting? It was just a huge search for… whatever.” She takes a swig of water, washing the staleness of sleep and past sweetness— like she’d been drinking soda or eating gummies, despite having neither— out of her mouth. “I’m just glad it wasn’t Quynh,” she admits quietly, barely loud enough to be heard over the road noise.

Joe squeezes her shoulder again. “Sebastien didn’t like talking about them. But he got used to them eventually, I think.”

Nile thinks about it, thinks about the silent desperation in his eyes and the way he held his flask like it was his best friend or lover, and doubts that he ever ‘got used to it’ but she accepts it anyway. It could just as easily been any other part of his life that had Booker fucked up. “Just hacking the brain meats. Anyway, sorry I fell asleep. Where are we?”

Andy takes a sharp turn onto a smaller road. “Just another few kilometers. You picked a good time to wake up.”

Nile yawns, stretching slightly and twisting to look behind. Joe still looks green in the faint light, but that could just as easily be the blue from the car clock. He and Nicky are closer than she’s seen them outside of sleep, hands joined in the middle seat like they’re teenagers in the backseat of their parent’s car. Nicky looks ready to be out of the car too and Nile can’t blame him.

Joe murmurs something under his breath that Nile can’t understand and couldn’t even hear enough to identify the language.

Andy snickers as she turns down yet another road. “I heard that.”

“You were meant to,” Joe says primly. “I know better than to try to keep secrets in a moving vehicle with you.”

Nile files that away for later investigation, turning back around and watching the occasional house light flash by. It’s not very different from road trips with her family, driving for hours to reach her grandmother’s after bedtime but struggling to stay awake anyway.

Andy makes another turn, onto something that Nile would guess is a farm road given how the car rattles against the gravel. The house, when they arrive, is set well back from the road, in a small hollow and shaded by trees.

“This is not Düsseldorf.”

Nicky makes a displeased sound. “When we bought this land, it was a full day’s ride from the city.”

That sounds significantly more permanent than an abandoned church or mine, or even a flat in London. Which… honestly sounds pretty great. She knows how to rough it, and it’s not like the FOB she was stationed at was the height of luxury, but there’s something to be said for electricity and running water.

Andy leads the way into the small house, flipping a light switch on the wall and waiting a moment for the lights to come on. “We pay one of the neighbors to keep an eye on the place, make sure the water heater doesn’t explode or the wires burn down the place,” she explains. “Well, I think right now, Nicky is.”

“Booker.” Nicky shakes his head. “His shell company bought mine… fifteen years ago? Twenty? We should probably move it around again if we’re going to be here long.”

“Wait, so this is Booker’s house?”

Andy shrugs. “Legally, yeah. But how much does that really matter?”

“And that’s… not going to be a problem?”

“He’s not going to come after us,” Joe says with a yawn. “Most of the safe houses, we trade around who legally owns them. Shell companies within conglomerates within shell companies… it’s exhausting. It was easier when we just needed to drop off a bag of coin every few years or so.”

“The houses didn’t have running water or central heat then either,” Nicky points out. “The coin was more to pay taxes and keep thatch on the roof.”

“And we’ve rebuilt this place twice since then.” Andy pushes past them towards the center of the house. It’s smaller than Nile thought, a single floor with one bedroom, a living area, and the kitchen. She thinks there might be a loft somewhere, but she hopes that door is actually a bathroom.

The footprint of this place probably matches the outline of the original cottage that they bought however long ago.

Pushing out a breath, Nile follows the guys into the bedroom, barely even frowning at the pair of full sized mattresses pushed into the back corners. Sharing, who cares. She claims the mattress on the right, dropping her bag in the corner.

Of course, now she’s awake enough she’s not going to be able to sleep. Muttering under her breath, she snatches the weapons bag from Andy’s shoulder and stalks towards the kitchen.

“Nile?” Nicky asks from the doorway as she unpacks the guns and maintenance kit. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, everything’s… fine,” she tries. “I’ll be in after while. Too… awake now to even make the attempt, ya know?”

He watches her for a few moments, as she steadily disassembles whoever's pistol was on top, cleaning it like there’s nothing terribly wrong. And there isn’t. Just because she’s a mess, freshly feeling the complete lack of structure in her life for the first time… ever, doesn’t mean he needs to witness it. “Seriously, Nicky. I’m fine. Go to bed.”

He doesn’t say anything, just grabs another pistol from the bag and drops a hand to her shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Do not worry about the edged weapons. We can do our own maintenance on those.”

Nile nods jerkily, focused on wiping old oil away. Nicky watches her for another moment before disappearing around the corner. She can hear quiet chatter from the bedroom, although not distinct words— not that she thinks they’re in English anyway— for a few minutes before the house falls silent around her. Soon, it’s just her, the guns, and an old house creaking its way through the night.

* * *

It would be easier to set the explosives if he had the actual blueprints for the building instead of a few minutes exploration and decades of experience, but he uses what he has. It won’t take much to knock this place into rubble anyway, part of the post-war building boom and dirt cheap construction.

It takes Eliot four trips to get everything set up correctly, his homemade explosives clustered around the central columns, where it makes the most sense for the meeting to take place.

No one will leave here alive, not the black marketeers, not the shitty doctor, definitely not the samples she’s supposedly bringing. And not Eliot. Might as well kill two birds with one explosion after all.

He feels Parker’s eyes on his back a few times as he works, but he doesn’t acknowledge her. There’s no point. It’ll just ensure that she sticks around for the grand finale and… One of them needs to go home to Alec, and they both know it won’t be him.

He’s pretty sure she gets that.

He lets himself get a bit mopey once he’s finished setting up, leaning against a pillar on the west side of the building where he’ll have a good view of everything that’s going on. Lets himself feel things, acknowledges the emotions, and then puts them away with years of practice, grateful that the last decade plus hasn’t stripped that from him.

The organ traffickers show up first, Belarussian. All of them have spent time in prison, three of them, obviously the muscle, former army. The leader, lower forties by Eliot’s guess, looks like he’s had some fight training, but nothing hides the paunch around his middle or in his face. Worked his way up then, instead of being granted his position by family connections.

The doctor is alone and alarm bells start going off somewhere in the back of Eliot’s mind. If she was smart, she’d have at least one person with her. Instead, she’s completely alone, dragging a carry-on sized suitcase behind her.

“Mr. Orlav?”

“Doctor. You have the samples?”

“Bone, liver, and kidney. The lung samples…” She trails off with a shrug. “There was an unfortunate incident in the lab.”

“I cannot grow lungs from nothing, Doctor.” Orlav sounds… odd, and Eliot can’t figure out why.

“You also cannot grow marrow, livers, and kidneys from nothing,” Kozak says sharply. “I can take these to my other employer.”

“They won’t risk the ethics violations,” Orlav laughs. “If you were going to take them to JRP, you would have. That you haven’t…” he trails off, and Eliot’s heard enough.

(Although it’s good to know who hired him— he’ll have to follow that up later. Make sure that JRP Pharmaceuticals knows better than to engage in human experimentation. Again. Some companies just don’t learn.)

He steps out from the pillar’s shadow with a laugh. “JRP is aware,” he says, stalking forward. “They sent me to retrieve the merchandise.”

“This is not—“ Kozak starts, before getting drowned out by the bark of one of the muscle’s semi-automatics.

A bullet grazes Eliot’s upper arm while the rest miss completely. Letting it heal on its own, he rushes the man. Another one lets off a poorly aimed burst, pointed at God know where. Eliot punches the first one in the chest, snatching the gun away as he coughs.

Clearing the gun and ejecting the magazine, Eliot tosses them to opposite sides.

Orlav shouts commands to his remaining minions, and they open fire. Eliot sprints towards Kozak, grabbing her and putting her between himself and Orlav. She shudders two-three times as she catches bullets meant for him.

He would feel bad, but he got enough from the others to know that her black eye is from Nile, the medical samples from Nicky and Joe, and he’s _not_ going to leave her alive at their backs.

He’ll feel things about killing again later.

Tossing her to the side, he looks for Orlav, scrambling for the case. Eliot rushes towards him, wincing as another burst of gunfire finds its home in his back. He baseball slides into Orlav’s shins, grabbing his shirt and pulling him down with him.

His left arm isn’t working right, alternating between fire and numbness— fuck he hates nerve damage— so Orlav manages to get in a couple of cheap shots before Eliot can force himself upright.

He braces his forearm across Orlav’s throat, cutting off the man’s air, while he fishes in his jacket pocket for the detonator.

As Eliot presses the button, he catches long blonde hair out of the corner of his eye. “Parker!”

And then everything is awash in fire and flame and falling concrete.

* * *

The explosion rocks the city, shockwaves traveling through the ground and sending Alec's coffee-- he hates London and the lack of orange soda-- to the ground. He rolls with it, has survived dozens of bombing campaigns and earthquakes, and turns back to his surveillance.

The camera he’s been watching survived, he's not sure how, with barely enough light to see through the dust and smoke. He can see...

His jaw clenches as his non-mouse hand slowly grinds a pen into his thigh. They're lying together, at least. Parker and Eliot curled around each other and buried in concrete and rebar. Parker's leg twitches spastically before going still. Deathly still and surrounded by too much blood for there to be any hope at all.

Alec watches the feed for another five minutes, his heart ripped out and thrown somewhere behind him, before nodding and steeling himself. He might not be able to join them in death, but he can do something about it.

Dropping the pen into his backpack, followed by his laptop, he shoulders it and disappears into the streets. He’ll need help— his sort of help, the sort that knows how bad losing your family can hurt.

JRP Pharmaceuticals already felt the wrath of a good man once, back when Nate was in charge. Alec is _not_ a good man and he has a lot more tricks up his sleeve when he has time to plan than he did twelve years ago.

He doesn’t bother with covering his tracks as he leaves London and the UK. Most players at their level will know what it means that both Parker and Eliot Spencer are dead. The ones who don’t will figure it out soon enough.

He’s going to war.

* * *

_A needle pushes into his eye, the sickening squelch of fluid being drawn out. He—She— wishes they would just take the entire eyeball, but they never do._

Booker shudders himself away, reaching for the nearest whiskey bottle with one hand while the other presses against his face, two eyes both whole. It wasn’t him.

Booker has dreamed of Quynh thousands of times, possibly millions— he’s never done the math, but every night for over two hundred years— and it’s still a shock whenever she’s _not_ drowning.

He’s not sure if those nights are the exception or the rule, not sure if her nightmares have been impacted by his or if someone really did pull her out, but there’s very few ways to figure it out without putting himself in more danger. Without putting the others in danger.

If they’re captured again, he might as well start planning how to throw himself into the sun. It will hurt less than whatever Nicky will come up with.

Pushing himself upright, he finishes the bottle and stares into the dark. No quiet snoring or sleepy mutters, no near silent breathing and watchful eyes in the dark waiting for him to lie back down. The thought nearly makes him climb out of bed for another bottle, but he forces himself to stay put.

Drinking more will just make him sleep, it won’t actually stop the dreams. And nothing but time will stop him from missing the night time noises of the crew.

Sighing, he flips on the lamp and gets up anyway.

His phone lights up with a message when he picks it up, first a news story that will probably matter more to him after he’s fully awake, and then a message from one of his dark web contacts.

Frowning, he ignores both, slowly preparing a pot of coffee and trying to remember if he’s eaten recently. The days blend together when he’s on his own, and food never seems important until someone is setting a plate in front of him. And there’s no one to do that anymore.

Coffee helps, even if it’s just the ritual of it. Today is just like yesterday, will be just like tomorrow. Nightmares and coffee, someone wanting to hire a team he’s been exiled from. He should have…

The message isn’t from a potential client. It’s from one of the few information brokers he trusts, asking if he knows anything about a pharmaceutical company or an explosion in London a couple days ago.

He’s heard of JRP, but doesn’t know much about them. The explosion… Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like a high level drug trade gone wrong. He would have believed the news reports too, except he catches the name of one of the victims, buried in a news report. Kozak.

He freezes, staring in horror as the full implications hit him.

Kozak was selling the samples she took from them.

He had assumed she was Merrick’s creature through and through, but if she wasn’t… if she had more than one employer… how far could she have sold them? Will they be still dealing with the fallout from this in years, decades?

Booker drops his flask twice trying to twist it open, shakily pouring it into his coffee while he sits, shell shocked.

When he can type without the message being more typo than not, he forces his thoughts into something like organized patterns so he can fill 4TheHorde in on what he knows. Medical testing, worked for Merrick, equally well-respected and sadistic. Whoever caused the explosion was probably aiming to shut down competitors as much as anything else.

It’s rambling and full of knowledge he shouldn’t have, knows too much about what she was selling. 4TheHorde will know immediately that something is going on, but Booker is too shocked and worried to deal with that right now.

He presses send and sags back in his chair, counting breaths and swallows of coffee, working his way back to numbness. Or at least that’s what he’s aiming for, although he doubts he’ll get back there.

Booker sits with it for about an hour, drinking steadily, before forwarding the entire thing to Copley. He could forward it to the team, he still knows their contact protocols, but he doesn’t. They made a decision, and it’s the least he deserves. Leave them in peace.

There’s another message from Horde when he clicks back over. And then he’s retching into the nearest trash can.

_Napoleon,_

_Given what you know about Merrick and Kozak, see attached images from JRP. They got my partners killed going after Kozak’s goods, and they have this woman trapped in one of their labs._

_They took something important away from me. I’m going to take something away from them._

_You want in?_

_—Horde_

The pictures are from security cameras and internal documents, nothing Booker hasn’t found or bought while researching both clients and targets over the years, but these are…

He recognizes Quynh from one of Joe’s endless sketchbooks. Except in the sketch, she’s brooding over a fire, Andy laughing behind her. Here, she’s strapped to a table, wearing only a lightweight pair of scrub pants, not even a tank top to preserve her modesty. A giant human-sized fishtank in the upper corner of the frame. There’s a tray of scalpels to the side, dark blurs of blood along her skin— vivid red, Booker knows, except the photos are grayscale security cameras— tracing where he supposes they carved into her.

He’s certain that’s where they carved into her.

All of Merrick’s precautions, capturing them all so that his “competitors” wouldn’t have anything to search for, and it was for nothing, because JRP already had their own lab rat. Searching for a way to live forever, even after drowning for five hundred years.

Taking a deep breath, Booker resists the urge to send his laptop flying across the room. Instead, he types out a terse message to Horde: coordinates for a park, a time and date— tomorrow afternoon, a few hours away from his hidey-hole in Marseilles— and a simple _I’m in_.

The urge to drink himself into oblivion is still there, but he has a mission now. It’s time to study up.

* * *

“I thought I was the only one,” Parker whispers into the dark, huddled into the corner of the train car. “Archie never figured it out, and if he didn’t know and Nate didn’t know…”

Eliot looks over, barely able to see her in not-quite-complete darkness, a faded blur in the other corner. “Archie and Nate didn’t know?”

“No. Archie… even then, I knew better than to trust him with it. Nate would have used it.”

Eliot nods, although there’s no way she’s going to be able to see it. “I think he suspected. Me, anyway. I haven’t always…”

“Yeah,” she agrees quietly. “There was never a plan where you died.”

“And then your plans… there was never a plan where any of us died, and it stopped coming up, and…” He swallows. “I stopped thinking about it. We were on the top of our game for so long and it never occurred to me to fake it until Merrick and running into Sterling.”

“He got old.”

“And I didn’t. And I’ll protect you ‘til my dying day, but I never stopped to think that it might be a lot longer than we were thinking.”

She shrugs, moving closer to him, close enough that he can wrap an arm around her shoulders. “So it’s just us now.”

“There are others,” he says cautiously. “You should have been dreaming of them, I don’t know why you haven’t. Why they haven’t been dreaming of you.”

“There was a new woman in my dreams, the past couple of weeks. Young, military. Marines, I think?”

“Nile,” Eliot breathes out. Why Nile and not the rest of them? “When did you die? The first time.”

She shrugs again, an easy motion under his arm. “I only remember the last… twenty years or so? Sometimes I’ll get flashes of memories much older, but I don’t know how to place them.”

Eliot hmms. Alec had been shocked at her knowing Spanish, and enough Russian to get by, but both of those are common enough in their line of work. “You kept the languages though,” he says, falling into Joe’s ancient dialect of Arabic. He doesn’t mean to test her, just wants to say things aloud without having to worry about it.

“I don’t know,” she says in the same language and he can feel the tension in her shoulders and back. “Some of them anyway.”

Eliot nods, squeezing her shoulders and letting his head sag back to rest against the steel wall of the train car. “The dreams stop when we meet each other, so if you’re only dreaming about Nile, you must have met everyone else at some point. But you being you…”

She huffs out a laugh. “Does picking their pockets count as meeting them? Or stealing their money?”

“Killing each other in the dark would.” He thinks. It’s not like they’ve had a great deal of ways to experiment over the centuries. And mostly, they’d sought each other out over years and decades, following clues from the dreams to narrow down the possibilities. If Parker hadn’t gone looking, or had but chosen to stay hidden, it could have stopped the dreams even if they shared a tavern once. “It doesn’t matter. It was too long ago now.”

Parker settles in closer, curling into Eliot’s side. It’s close to how they’ve slept before in the van, on jobs that go bad or when they just need a quick nap between parts (He won’t admit that his shitty sleeping habits have worn off on Parker and Alec, but they have. And theirs have rubbed off on him. Sleep is a comfort he grabs whenever he can, even if it’s uncomfortable.) “How long until we change trains?”

“A couple hours. After that, we’re on foot or stealing a car.”

“We can call for a ride.”

“My phone is compromised, I ditched it somewhere in England. Unless you’ve got a burner—“

She shifts, and he can feel her watching him. Right. They’ll have cash and a phone as soon as she hits a moderately busy street. “Sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

Parker doesn’t respond, just twitches back into a comfortable position, and is asleep in minutes. He stares down at her, one arm wrapped around her and the other holding a knife, ready to protect her.

He dozes lightly as the night landscape passes outside. The chances of anyone inspecting this car, filled with boxes of some variety, and discovering them is pretty slim, but he doesn’t want to risk it. Not while they’re running this exposed.

* * *

Somehow, when Nile thought about her life after the Marines, she envisioned a lot fewer up before dawn days. She’s naturally an early riser, mornings are not the hardship for her they are for a lot of people, but she’s got nothing on Andy, who appears to view sleeping as a waste of time.

Case in point.

“Up and at ‘em,” Andy demands, slapping Nile’s calf in predawn gray. “We’ve got shit to do. Let’s go.”

Nicky and Joe, the next bed over, mutter something that Nile doesn’t understand but is willing to bet is uncomplimentary, before burying their faces deeper into their pillows. The only way Andy will stop is if Nile forces herself out of bed (away from dreams about train rides and typing between drowning with Quynh), so she does, pulling on jeans and a t-shirt and snatching a clean pair of socks from her bag as she pads after Andy.

“There time for breakfast?”

Andy shakes her head, dumping the last of a pot of coffee into a travel mug. “We’ll grab something in town. Three spoons of sugar?”

“Two.” Nile pulls on her boots, sliding a knife into one and a second knife under the sleeve of her shirt. “Expecting trouble?”

Andy shrugs. “No more than usual. El called. While he can walk out, he’d prefer a ride.”

“Any idea why he stayed back?” Nile yawns and snatches the coffee away from Andy, gesturing for her to go ahead. “He just disappeared.”

Andy shrugs, lifting the keys from Nicky’s jacket by the door. “He’ll tell us in his own time. Probably something to do with his old life, he was worried about… something.”

Nile nods, sliding into the passenger seat and latching onto her coffee, hoping it will kick in sooner rather than later.

The drive into town doesn’t take very long, they really are closer to Düsseldorf than Nile thought, and soon enough, Andy is pulling to a stop next to a train yard on the outskirts.

Except, where Nile was expecting one person, there’s two.

She recognizes Eliot, standing with his arms crossed and watching the road— he’s picked up a haircut over the last three days or so, but that’s not enough of a change to even register.

There’s a blonde woman standing a few steps behind him. Slender bordering on skinny, bouncing on the balls of her feet despite the uneven footing. Nile frowns, watching the two of them together before stepping out of the car. She recognizes how they move— or don’t move, in Eliot’s case— they’ve worked together for a long time, same as she did with Dizzy and Jay, same as a lot of squadrons do.

“They’re letting you out of the house already?” Eliot’s mouth twitches into something almost a smile. “Let me talk to Andy for a sec?” He doesn’t wait for a response, sliding past her into the passenger seat before Nile has a chance to even process.

“Who are you?” The blonde asks, stepping further into the shadow, away from Nile. Her arms are loose at her sides, but Nile thinks she’d rather have them crossed.

“Nile.” She doesn’t extend a hand to shake. It seems wrong somehow. “You?”

“Parker.” She waits, expecting Nile to react, but Nile doesn’t recognize the name at all. “You’re the new one?”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t say anything else, just settles into her role of lookout, fiddling with the knife in her sleeve.

* * *

“What the hell—“

Eliot jerks his head into a shake. “I wouldn't have brought her if she wasn’t related, Andy. You know that.”

“You can’t bring your girlfriend into this life just because you’ll miss her!”

“She was in the explosion, right next to me.” He blows out a breath. “She hates it when people know more about her than she expects, so it’s her story to tell. But it wasn’t her first death or her last, obviously.”

“If she’s one of us, why didn’t we dream of her?”

“I wish I knew. There’s only two options.”

Andy sighs with a wince. “Both those options suck.”

That’s not Eliot’s problem. He just wanted to give Andy a head’s up. Probably should have done that when he called after jumping off the train, but he’d been in a hurry. “Nile’s not dreamed of her at all?”

Andy shrugs. Would anything penetrate the living nightmare of Quynh? Or, more likely, after seeing her new family in the worst week they’ve had in decades, would she say anything about a few odd dreams about blonde women? There’s not exactly a shortage of those in the world.

“Get them in the car,” Andy orders finally. “I want breakfast.”

“We swung through a few years back after a job. That bakery you like was still open.”

Andy lifts an eyebrow. “You remember _that_ but not to check in every couple of years?”

“You’ll like Parker, Boss,” Eliot says with a grin, popping the door open so he can claim the backseat with Parker. “Just never let her drive,” he says louder with a glance over his shoulder.

Parker, on cue, grins. “My driving is great.”

Eliot nods, jerking his head towards the car and allows them to slide into the well worn argument. “You drive like a getaway driver, darlin’.”

“And how did you learn?” She pauses, smirks. “That’s why you look more at home on the back of a horse.”

Eliot opens his mouth to point out who taught him, the true story this time, when Andy jumps in. “What’s wrong with how El drives?”

“He’s boring,” Parker says. She leans forward, between the seats to look at the controls. “This car is boring too.”

Nile looks at them both from her spot in the passenger seat before slumping in defeat. “Eliot, there’s two of them. What the hell, I thought you were on my side.”

Andy laughs as she pulls away from the curb, heading deeper into the city. “There are no sides, kid. Just family.”

Nile huffs playfully before grabbing the coffee mug and draining it. “Fine, but I need more coffee to deal with all this.”

“Coming right up,” Eliot says. “As soon as we get to the bakery, anyway.”

“The bakery in Düsseldorf?” Parker says sharply, a slightly manic gleam in her eye. “The one you refused to take me back to after the Rosewill Job?”

“We had Sterling, half a dozen agencies on our asses, and just as many private armies. There was no time for pastries.”

“Alec could have—“ she stumbles to a stop, letting the car lapse into silence for a long moment. “He could have bought us enough time,” she finishes, quieter. “If we’d really wanted.”

Eliot doesn’t point out that Alec had been reduced to two flip phones and a Kindle by the time they got out of that job, and hadn’t slept in three days. They’d all been running on fumes, their first big job after Nate and Sophie left and still working out the kinks for how the team would run with Parker as mastermind. She knows, or is willfully forgetting; either way, reminding her will serve no purpose.

“Rosewill Job?” Nile asks into the silence. “What does that mean?”

“Chinese oilman obsessed with roses,” Parker waves it off. “He was pumping millions through some banks, had information we needed for a different job.”

“You’re con artists,” Nile says flatly, and yeah, Eliot suspected that was going to be a problem sooner or later.

“Ehhh,” Eliot sighs. “More like Robin Hood.”

“Sometimes bad guys are the only good guys you’ve got,” Parker points out, relaxing into the seat a bit. She’s still very carefully not touching him, but he expected that, she rarely does unless she’s certain that they’re safe.

While he is certain that no one in this car will intentionally harm either of them, that’s a long way from safe and even further from her being certain. She’s probably already come up with a dozen plans to get them to one of her safe houses at least.

They lapse into silence as Andy weaves through the streets.

* * *

Parker would kill for a set of their comms right now, just two, enough to talk to Eliot without anyone eavesdropping. But that’s not a option and with leaving Alec—

She strangles the thought before it can bloom. Now isn’t the time, she can indulge herself later, when she’s actually alone.

Andy meets her eyes in the mirror, her face falling. She’s confused, Parker is pretty sure, wondering where Parker fits into this. The dream thing, probably, Eliot had been weirded out by that. Bad weirded out, an unexpected laser grid in an unimportant hallway. If that had been missed, what else was missing?

She turns her face to stone and watches, gathering information as quickly as she can in a silent car.

* * *

“Do you speak German?” Andy demands as soon as she parks the car, before Nile has even unbuckled— needed or not, a lifetime of habit is hard to break in two weeks.

“Not enough to hold a conversation.” Nile tilts her head, pushing her braids behind her. “I can probably order a beer or ask for the bathroom.” And even those, she’s going to have an unmistakable American accent.

Andy scoffs. “That’s not speaking a language.”

“Sorry I’ve not been around long enough to know Indo-European,” Nile snarks. “Spanish, sure. Pashto, I’m working on it. But it takes time to learn a language, _time I’ve not had yet_.”

She refuses to feel bad about snapping, not when it’s barely seven am and she’s had a cup of coffee and a very tense standoff with someone she’s pretty sure could kill her without even trying.

Everyone in this car could kill her without trying, actually. Andy might even do it by accident.

Andy looks like she’s ready to fight it out, but Eliot slams his car door before she has a chance. Climbing out and glancing around, Parker is already halfway up the block, hands loose at her sides with her sweatshirt hood up. Nile thinks she sees her hands move as she approaches a trio of businessmen on the sidewalk, but then she’s past them with no change.

Eliot’s watching too, a slight smile on his face. It’s not the first smile Nile’s seen, but it is the softest. Like Nicky watching Joe sketch in the afternoon sunlight.

Oh. _Partners_.

Andy elbows Nile, encouraging her to look elsewhere, don’t draw attention to… whatever Parker is doing. “Let Joe and Nicky know to expect an extra for breakfast?”

Nile nods, slipping her phone out of her pocket and dialing, taking a few steps away from the car as she does.

“Nile, is everything alright?” Nicky answers almost immediately, worry already coloring his voice. “Is Andy—“

“She’s fine,” Nile says firmly, rolling her eyes. Nicky really hasn’t taken Andy’s mortality well. “We both are. But we’re bringing back company, can you expect an extra for breakfast?” It feels like a code phrase, so she goes ahead and repeats Andy verbatim rather than risk any misunderstandings.

“How many more?”

“Two. El and a… friend.”

Nicky hums softly. “Make sure they know that if they want anything fancy, it’s not going to be this morning. Take Andy to a patisserie.”

Nile chuckles. “We’re already at one, waiting for it to open.”

“I’ll make sure there’s coffee,” Nicky says abruptly, almost rudely, and hangs up.

Nile frowns at her phone, briefly wondering what she said to set him off, and slides it into her pocket. Parker is back from her wander, hood down and shoulders back. She looks uncomfortable, but not like she’s about to start running, which… Nile will take at the moment. There’s too much going on this morning as it is.

Eliot holds the door open for them, sweeping all three of them ahead of him in a ridiculously gallant gesture that doesn’t fit with what she knows about him. Nile starts to say something before she catches a glimpse of his and Parker’s faces. She can’t figure out how, but he’s changed who he is again, and this _is_ perfectly in character for him.

Honestly, it could give a girl a complex, all this switching personalities at the drop of a hat.

Andy drags Nile along in her wake, ordering four or five pastries and, after a look back at Eliot, a loaf of bread in rapid-fire German before gesturing sharply for Nile to make her request and step aside. Parker follows Nile and then Eliot and they’re all uptight assholes that make Nile blush as she scrambles to hold the waxed paper bags she’s handed before passing over a stack of Euros that she hopes will cover it all.

Overall, they’re going to come across as a group of high level business execs and their overwhelmed intern. She just wishes they would have told her that before walking into the shop.

“Danke,” she mutters, shoving the change into her pocket and following the others out the door and back into the car, climbing into the open backseat before Parker peels out like she’s in the Indy 500 or something.

“This is more likely to get us caught than anything else,” Nile points out as Parker weaves through morning traffic, heading out of the city, even if she’s going in the wrong direction for the safe house.

Parker snorts as she turns onto a major thoroughfare. “Not the first time I’ve slipped the cops, won’t be the last.”

Andy looks almost impressed, and Nile tries not to feel insecure. It’s stupid, she’s not going to lose her place just because Andy has a new partner in crime. Or several. There’s just been so much—

Nope. She’s better than that. Learn the skills Parker can teach her without putting her emotions into it. And _nothing_ until she’s eaten, having emotions on an empty stomach is never a good idea.

“What did Nicky say?” Andy asks when Parker slows to a reasonable speed.

“That he would make more coffee. And then he hung up.” Nile frowns. “Well, after he told me to take you to a patisserie.”

Eliot snorts. “So buying time for morning sex. That hasn’t changed at least.”

Andy tilts her head in agreement before pointing Parker to the next turn. “Nothing will change that.”

She and Eliot fall into something that sounds like bickering, except it’s in a language Nile can’t identify. Norwegian maybe, although it might be older— she’s still wrapping her head around the fact that Andy predates an entire language group, Joe and Nicky predate the modern forms of most languages she’s heard of, and if Eliot’s around the same age, he does too.

“So how old are you?” She asks flatly, glancing up at the mirror.

Parker looks strange for a moment, her knuckles going white on the wheel, before her face smooths out and something shifts. “Thirty-six.”

“How long have you been thirty-six?”

Parker shrugs, and something about it makes Nile back off. Parker’s clearly got secrets, and this is probably not the time to be pushing them. She’ll tell them when she’s ready. “A while,” Parker says finally, glancing at Eliot. “It’s complicated.”

Complicated covers their entire lives, but Nile accepts that it’s all she’s going to get.

* * *

**THEN**

She’s clumsy, shaking with hunger and exhaustion, reaching her hand into the man’s pocket, but she doesn’t think he’ll notice— he’s talking to the little girl next to him, asking if she likes the ice cream cone. She wants an ice cream cone, or anything at all, to fill the gnawing hole in her gut.

The days blend together, and she’s not sure when she last ate.

Shoving the wallet into her pocket, she turns away, but not before the man catches her eye and raises an eyebrow. Her brow furrows and she steps into the narrow space between buildings, not even a proper alley.

He’s got a kid with him, he won’t be able to follow her immediately. Backing further into the space— barely three foot, less with the utility boxes and pipes— she watches the street for the space of a few heartbeats before making up her mind. He won’t follow her, but he might find a cop and report her.

She’s already learned the most valuable lesson for her current skill set: no one ever looks up. Wedging herself between the walls, she works her way up, first one story, then a second and a third. The building to her back tops out there, and she rolls onto the roof as quickly and quietly as she can.

She lies there for hours, baking into the tiles. Eventually, she gets bored and pulls out the wallet. She pockets the cash— enough to eat for a few days, longer if she’s careful— before combing through the rest of the contents. Drivers license, a couple of credit cards, a photo of the man’s family, some notes that she can’t understand.

Too easy to trace. Stuffing it all back inside, she flings the wallet over the edge of the roof, content to let it disappear.

It’s dark before she dares to move, crouching to walk along the rear parapet to stay out of sight from the street. Dropping to the ground at the corner, she takes a deep breath before strolling out onto the sidewalk like she has nothing to fear.

“I’d like my wallet back, please,” the man says firmly. He came out of nowhere, in the middle of the block.

She steps back, getting ready to run. “Tossed it.”

“Where?” His hand flashes out, grabs her arm tightly. “I need that.”

She shakes her head frantically, trying to get free, but he’s got too tight of a grip on her. “I didn’t... it was hours ago. I just took the cash.”

“Where?” He shakes her and she tries to decide if it’s worth the broken arm to get away. It won’t take very long to heal, but…

She swallows, wrenching her arm free. It hurts, the sharp crack of bone, but she’s run with worse, and at least this time it isn’t her ankle. She ducks around him, running down the street, mindful of the streetlights and the heavy footstep of cops.

The electricity arcs through her, drops her to the ground where she shudders and shakes. She sees the death coming, her heart pounding out of rhythm and stuttering to a stop.

She still hasn’t eaten.

The man is crouching over her when she comes back, gasping for air.

“I thought—“ He cuts himself off, backing off slightly. “You were dead.”

She shrugs. “It happens,” she says finally, reaching into her pocket. She brushes past the cash, grabbing the pocket knife. “I don’t have your wallet. Leave me alone.”

“Oh, no, my dear,” he says, pushing himself to his feet. He’s changed clothes from this afternoon, dark grays and blacks like she wears, enough that she didn’t catch him as a threat, just another person walking in Brooklyn after dark. “We have a lot to discuss.”

She ignores his hand, pushing herself to her feet and trying to decide if she should run again. But then she sees his hand twitch towards the weapon that’s half out of his pocket and she just… doesn’t want to die again. Not tonight. Not over this. Not when she’s going to have plenty of chances to get away later. “What do you want?” She asks flatly.

“To train you.” He hurries to explain when he sees her expression. “You’re very good already. You could be the best the world has ever seen.”

She’s skeptical. How could she not be? But he’s seen her face and knows what she can do now. Better to go along with it until she can find a way to escape. She nods, carefully, backing out of grabbing distance. “How?”

“My girl, no other pickpocket in this city would dare. That you did…” He smiles, more wolfishly than before. “Only someone truly great would go after me.”

She’s not great, just hungry, and still has no idea who this guy is, but she can read between the lines. Let him train her, and be assured that no one will bother her. Don’t and… well, she already has enough trouble with the local gangs and cops. She nods again, more sure of herself.

Take the knowledge offered and don’t look back when you’re done.

Her face must do something, because he smiles again, broader, like he won something. “Good. Now, you can call me Archie. What should I call you?”

She glances up, catches sight of a sign pointing towards a— “Park...er. Parker.” It’s the first time she’s named herself in years and it feels like trust. Foreign and weird, but trust.

* * *

**NOW:**

4TheHorde has been a major player in the black and gray markets for over ten years, and somehow, it never occurred to Booker just how young he might be. Not that it matters, the American who just sat across from him looks like he’s in his late twenties to mid-thirties. He keeps his bag on his lap as he sits, glancing around the park and scoping out the others nearby.

“Do you play?” Booker asks in Spanish, gesturing at the chessboard between them.

The young man huffs. “Not well, I’m afraid,” he responds. He grins, reaches over and moves a pawn seemingly at random and then it’s on.

It’s been a long time since Booker played against anyone besides his family. The point though, is to watch Horde and see how he reacts and plans. If not chess, then card games.

They play the first game silently, getting used to each other. Horde plays… oddly; full of the bluster and bravado Booker expects from Americans, but that’s just a cover for the sneak attacks that slowly wear down Booker’s defenses until he’s in check.

Booker pulls out his flask while he contemplates his options, taking a quick swig before spinning the top closed again and shoving it back into his pocket. Horde’s eyes follow the motion, hardening momentarily before he looks back at the board. Interesting.

Mentally throwing his hands up, Booker moves his king recklessly, taking Horde’s rook and then they’re locked in, both of them moving aggressively, ignoring defense to focus on winning.

Booker manages it, somehow, cornering Horde’s king and waiting for him to topple. He’s grinning when he looks up. “You play like an American,” he says quietly. “It’s very distinctive.”

Horde freezes for a split second and nods jerkily. “So I’ve been told.” Grief splashes across his face, more than Booker expects from a lost chess game. He wants to dig, the wound (both of them) is worth knowing about if he’s going to work with Horde, but… He can’t make himself push.

It is enough to know what buttons to press, he doesn’t need to preemptively press them.

“You had a job?” Booker asks, setting the pieces aside.

“Yeah.” Horde swallows, reaching into his bag and pulling out a tablet and a folder of papers. “You heard about the Merrick mess?”

Booker hmms, reaching for the folder. “Human experimentation, Kozak and Merrick both wanted for questioning, except Merrick’s a pancake and Kozak has disappeared.”

“She's dead,” Horde says flatly. “An explosion in southeast London, three days ago.”

Flipping open the folder, Booker slowly pages through surveillance photos, following Kozak around London as she meets with others— Copley and Merrick in one, another businessman in another, someone with a peculiarly Russian taste in fashion in a third. “Merrick’s dead, I don’t recognize the others.” He keeps going though, like watching a particularly nasty train wreck.

“These are just what were on Merrick’s servers. He thought she was selling corporate secrets. She was, so that’s the smartest thing he’s ever done.”

The last set of photos aren’t surveillance. They’re stills from a security camera, Kozak and the gangster meeting in a warehouse, someone else stepping out of the shadows before the set abruptly ends. “They died in the explosion?”

“Unless you know anyone who can survive having thirty tons of concrete dropped on them after suffering extensive burns.” Horde’s voice is tight, his hands clenching on the strap to his bag. “The deal went south before the explosion anyway, and they were at ground zero.”

Booker does actually know people who can do that, several of them. He is one. And he’s suddenly deeply deeply afraid that Kozak and Keane might be too. But no. There have been no new dreams, just Quynh’s endless drowning— although he wonders about that now, with solid evidence that she’s not, that while she’s being tortured, it’s not drowning.

Like he knows the next question Booker is going to ask, Horde nods towards the folder. “Whatever samples she brought with her were also destroyed. The man who set the explosives was very thorough.” There’s that grief again, like he _knew_ whoever set this up.

“Which leaves us with JRP,” Booker says, pushing past whatever emotions are fucking with Horde. “And their human test subject.”

Gathering the photos back into their folder, Horde slips it back into his bag and replaces it with a tablet. “I don’t know what her name is, or even if she has a name. Their records on her just start about three months ago when they set Kozak up with a lab in one of the satellite facilities.”

He lays out what he’s been able to find, clearly used to having to brief people. Horde even has slides on his tablet, teaching aids that Booker would have killed to have while briefing the others.

The thought slices into his heart— by the time he has to brief anyone again, the technology will have completely changed.

Horde leans back in his chair, jaw clenched and ticking. “I can’t let her stay there. The Merrick half of the equation has solved itself, but not the JRP. If Kozak had assistants or a partner—“

Set Quynh free and return her to Andy. Let them…

“Her name is Quynh,” Booker starts slowly, pulling out his flask again with shaking hands. “She’s… immortal, or close enough.” There’s not enough whiskey in the world for this conversation, there never has been. “They tore her away from her partner, claimed they were too powerful together. Locked her into an iron box and dropped it somewhere in the Irish Sea.” He gulps down the whiskey, feeling the ghost of unfathomable pressure and salt and water press on him. He pulls at his collar with his free hand, but it doesn’t do any good. It never does.

“You know her?”

“ _Non_.” Three months. JRP has had her for three months. Kozak never needed him or the others. It was all just theatre. “She was before my time.”

* * *

Before his time? Alec pushes aside his grief and anger long enough to actually look at the man across from him. He doesn’t look much older than Alec does, but he suddenly sounds _much_ older.

Alec’s French is rudimentary, barely up to the task of navigating the cities and towns he drove through to get here, but he knows very well that some things must be talked about in your mother tongue. Too much emotion gets lost.

“They were tossing women off ships in the Seventies?” They weren’t, he knows they weren’t, but it’s a wedge to get Book to talk about it. Alec has played this game on the other side for years, he knows what traps to lay.

“1470’s, yes, but that’s not when Quynh drowned.” Book’s hand spasms, reaching for his flask before remembering it’s empty. “One of the first trials after witchcraft was made a capital crime.”

That was… a very long time ago. Alec swallows, glancing at the other folder of information in his bag, the one he never should have printed out, but did anyway, just on the off chance that Book might know something about it. “And she’s been down there for… however long?”

“They spent thirty years looking for her,” Book whispers. “Three hundred mourning her, thinking she was dead, and then…” he shrugs, scoffs. “She’s been found and I can’t even tell them.”

There’s a lot there to unpack, but Alec puts it aside. He’s pretty certain Book didn’t mean to tell him this much. “So lets get her back. Or at least, away from JRP and she can make her own choices.”

Nate had been right all those years ago, pointing out that Alec just wasn’t ruthless enough to run his own team. This isn’t a team, this is a pair, both of them heartbroken and willing to do whatever it takes.

Shoving the tablet back into his satchel, he starts setting up the chess board again. “Alec, by the way. Or Hardison.” Soon he’ll have to burn his name anyway, disappear into the ether. Might as well give this guy one that actually has meaning.

“Booker.” He wrinkles his nose, and yeah, pain lies there. “Sebastien.”

Alec nods, double checking the positioning. “White moves first.”

* * *

Nile is the first one through the door into their little house, dropping the pastry bags and a loaf of bread onto the kitchen table before marching right back out. Nicky watches her go with a frown before turning Joe. “Did something—“

Joe’s already in motion, marking his spot in his book and following Nile into the living room. Nicky can’t hear words, only volume and tone, but something has Nile and now Joe upset. He doesn’t hear Andy.

He doesn’t hear Andy.

He has the stove flipped off and the pan off the heat immediately, rushing into the other room with his heart plummeting. Not Andy, not yet. They’ve barely begun to get used to the idea of losing her.

He stumbles to a stop behind Joe, reaching out to brush the offered hand. This is their safe house and there’s a stranger and…

She looks familiar. The same way Nile had looked familiar when they finally met her, or Andy and Quynh or Booker, or even Eliot. Except the dreams of her were different. They’d stopped without warning, three or four months after they started.

Neither of them had brought up what that might have meant at the time: either they’d met her without recognizing her or she’d gone to her final death despite being so very young. He and Joe had hoped for the former, but without a way to track her, there was no way to know for certain.

He sags against the doorframe, adrenaline draining out of him as soon as it started. Elijah stands next to the blonde woman, slightly in front of her. Making it clear that anyone who tries to attack her is going to go through him first. It’s subtle, and Nicky isn’t sure he realizes that he’s doing it.

Andy and Nile stand at opposite sides of the room, tense and upset. Andy’s got her hands loosely clenched into fists, like she’s irritated— but not angry and not looking for a fight. Nile doesn’t look happy either, and far more angry than Andy.

“What’s going on?” he asks, glancing between them all.

“Parker has nothing to prove to you,” Elijah snaps. “Not remembering a dream or two doesn’t mean we’re lying.”

“The blonde,” Joe mutters in Arabic. “In the…late thirteen hundreds? Do you remember?”

“Si. We were traveling through the Alps, trying to meet up with Andy and Quynh.” Nicky frowns, switching back to English. “They were supposed to meet us in Zürich.”

Elijah, Eliot, damnit, groans. “That fucking trip. The plague dogged every kilometer and they were four months late.”

“We weren’t.”

“You’re the one who said spring, Boss, not us,” Joe points out. “And then didn’t show up until late summer.”

Andy sniffs. “I don’t remember.”

Even Nile and Parker roll their eyes at that one, and they barely know Andy.

“Sure,” Nile says dryly. “Convenient. So you three had dreams about her?” She asks pointedly.

Nicky nods, watching Joe and Eliot do the same. “They stopped after only a few weeks. We never discussed why because…” he shrugs. “Women such as her appear in dreams all the time and she stopped as quickly as she came.”

Parker tilts her head, bird-like, her face mostly impassive. Nicky does not think it is because of his confirmation, but he might be wrong.

“Great.” Eliot throws his arms up. “Any other objections? We’ve always brought new ones into the family.”

Andy sighs, defeated, even though Eliot is right. Nicky is wondering why it even came up.

Brewing fight dissipated, Nicky turns back to the kitchen and the breakfast he left. Joe follows, brushing a hand against Nicky’s hip and a kiss against his cheek before taking his seat at the table with his coffee and book.

“What do you think?” Joe asks, barely glancing up.

Nicky shrugs, drizzling some oil into the pan before reaching for the eggs. “It would be a terrible thing, to be alone for that long.” He cracks a couple eggs into the pan before turning around to look at Joe. “What would you do after centuries alone?”

Joe’s eyes darken and he switches to their own private blend of Genoese and the Arabic of his birth. “How could I live without my sun and moon for so long? Much less keep my sanity. They did not meet until recently, and you can already see that she makes his heart light.”

Nicky nods. “A lightness his heart has sore needed, I suspect.” They share a look, full of worry for their brother before it breaks, Nicky returning to the stove and Joe his book.

The others come in after a while, Parker still a quiet shadow behind Eliot. She watches the room in quick movements, uncomfortable although she is pretending well, Nicky will give her that.

The meal— eggs, rice, the pastries the others brought back— is over quickly, Nile and Parker eating quickly before escaping silently out the back door. Nicky supposes as the youngest ones here, they’re bonding quickly.

Picking up empty plates, Eliot sighs and drops them next to the sink. “Just say it, Andy.”

“You’re certain?” She asks instead, her eyes bleak. “She didn’t just… get knocked unconscious?”

“I pulled the rebar out myself. I wasn’t…” Eliot swallows. “What she does. Most folks at her level get five or six years before their bodies start falling apart. It’s the worst sort of rock climbing, football playing, and ballet combined.” He laughs. “I should have noticed it years ago. She took a fall on a job— a bad one, lesser thieves have died— and landed right next to the server room. Torn ACL by the time I got there to check it out. And she went along with it, bored shitless by the third day.”

“It took her three days to heal?”

Eliot shakes his head. “Knowing what I know now? She was healed by the time I got a brace on her but she didn’t—“

“She didn’t want to stand out,” Joe says quietly. “Didn’t want… what? Would she have been harmed?”

Eliot shakes his head. “I have my suspicions, but the prime reasons are both dead. Not likely to be an issue anymore. And well, she doesn’t remember much before the mid-eighties, so.”

That _is_ worrying, but they’ve all had times where things don’t come back right. Whatever causes their bodies to heal sometimes chooses oddly. Memories, body parts, it is all the same. Parker might physically be the same woman she was six hundred years ago, but she isn’t the same person.

“Alright then.” Andy blows out a breath and nods. “Two new ones in a month. And Nile says I’m out of commission until this heals, so working together is going to take some time.”

“You’re only out of the game for weeks, Andy. Not years or permanently,” Eliot points out. “Just do the exercises you can while you’re healing. You’ll need to actually do the physical therapy assigned.”

“Sounds boring.”

Nicky huffs a laugh. “Yes, but also very familiar.”

“What am I supposed to be doing while waiting? In between exercises.”

Joe and Eliot share a look, the one that has always promised trouble in the most interesting ways. Nicky braces himself, hoping it won’t be too chaotic— Nile and Parker seem like they’ll bring enough chaos into their lives. Eliot shrugs, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head. “I thought you’d like to find Quynh.”

“It’s been centuries. All the men who sailed on that ship, and their descendants, are long dead.”

“And we have over a century of sonar mapping of the oceans now. If we can narrow it down—“

It’s the first evidence of hope Nicky has seen on Andy’s face in years.

Smiling softly, he meets the other’s eyes and nods. They can work with this.

(It still leaves the larger problem behind— how much of herself will Quynh actually be— but hope is something lacking all too often in their lives. Nicky will borrow the worry for that later. When there is something concrete to worry about.)

* * *

Alec jackrabbits up on Booker’s couch, breathing heavily and reaching for Parker and El. He lets his arm fall when it hits the back of the couch instead of a warm body, night-chilled silk brocade sucking the life out of his back and arm.

He understands, a little better now, why Nate chose to live in a bottle after Sam. He was always going to outlive El and Parker, but to lose them both at once, on a job they didn’t tell him about…

There’s a gaping maw inside his chest, slowly devouring him. He just needs it to give him time, one last job to get this Quynh out of the lab— she’s like him, Booker is like him— and then he can hide someplace while he figures out how to live again.

He chokes on a sob, pressing a hand to his mouth to muffle the sound.

Booker shuffles in a couple minutes later anyway, heading straight for the bottle perched on the counter. Glancing over, he raises the bottle at Alec and waggles it, silently asking if he wants any.

Alec nods, hoping the dim light will hide the tears and pushes himself to his feet, stumbling over to the small table in the corner. He tosses back the drink, covering the glass when Booker goes to pour him another. “No. I’m good.”

“Are you?” Booker asks. “Or are you just too good to drink with me?”

Alec shakes his head, swallowing down his grief. “Had a friend try to drink his pain away. I don’t want to go down that road.” The nightmare that woke him is familiar anyway, he’s been dreaming of drowning since his first death on that muddy road in France. Trauma, he guesses, made worse by drowning again back with Moreau.

It hasn’t felt as angry the past couple of weeks, but every night, clockwork. “Nightmare, anyway. Drinking hasn’t helped with those since…” he shrugs. “Ever? Normally, I’d play video games.”

Booker watches him warily. “I can pull out the chess set?”

Alec shakes his head, getting up to fill his glass with water— hot, and not salty, as far from ocean depths or mud puddle or a hotel pool as possible— before leaning against the counter. “No reason for us both to not sleep.”

Booker huffs bitterly. “Do any of us ever sleep well? Between dreams of Quynh and the blonde woman…”

Alec frowns. “What?”

“The dreams. The ones that allow us to find each other?” Booker pauses to pour himself another drink. “Misery loves company, I guess.”

“No, I never.” He takes another drink of water, ignoring the trembling in his hands. “I only dreamed of drowning and a… blonde woman. But the blonde disappeared years ago and a black woman took her place, three weeks ago? Four?”

“Why did we never dream of you?” Booker mutters in French, staring into his glass. “When did you die?”

“Late ‘44.” He thinks for a moment, trying to remember. Most of those months he was travelling all over the place, barely able to keep up with the advancing armies and their footholds. “Near Vire.”

Booker nods sharply. “We were operating here then. They always liked France after what happened in England and Andy was looking for a fight.”

“Would that have mattered?”

Booker nods. “Once we meet, the dreams stop. And those were some very busy weeks.”

He might have met them in passing without even realizing. Alec sighs, draining his water and slumping back to the table. “I should have realized that dreaming most every night about the same woman was unusual.”

“You were alone.” Which is meaningless. He was alone when he was figuring out how to turn his skills from the war into something that would keep food in his belly even if he didn’t necessarily have a roof over his head.

“The black woman’s name is Nile,” Booker says out of nowhere. “Another American, a marine.”

Alec tucks the information away. One day he’ll find her and meet her, make the dreams stop. When he can be a person again. They’ve got time, apparently.

“What about you?” Alec asks. “If you know them, why aren’t you with them?”

Booker chokes, reaching for the bottle again. His eyes, which had been slowly showing more life to them, immediately die again, a sardonic twist to his lips. “Exiled. It…” He laughs darkly. “They couldn’t have been more cruel in their mercy if they tried.” Slamming to his feet, he stumbles back towards his bedroom, taking the bottle with him.

Alec watches him go before slowly making his way back to the couch.

* * *

Seventeen days down; thirty-six thousand, five hundred and eight left. Without thinking about it, he squeezes his left wrist hard enough that the bones creak. Thousands of days stretch out ahead of him and behind him, alone, even in the presence of others.

Even Alec will leave, as soon as he gets over whatever is haunting him.

Just him, Quynh, and his regrets.

The exhaustion overwhelms him, pins him to his bed even as he hears Alec climb off the couch and pad into the kitchen yet again.

There’s nothing in the cabinets unless vodka counts as a food group. Steeling himself, Booker forces himself to his feet and into the kitchen. He thumps the coffee maker into spitting out life giving bean juice, and slaps the cabinet shut again. “There isn’t anything.”

“You just… drink all day? Don’t eat anything?”

Booker shrugs. “I’ve not been to this house in a long time.” It’s true enough, although he doesn’t think Alec will accept that for very long. He can feed himself, if the need arises, but it hasn’t very often in the last hundred years.

Another thing he’s going to have to figure out, he supposes, but he’s starved to death before, a few more times won’t hurt him.

“Man, this can’t stand,” Alec curses quietly before reaching for his phone. He types furiously for a few moments before nodding decisively. “Get your rig set up,” he orders. “We’ve got work to do. I’ll be back in an hour.” His hand dips into his left pocket, like he expects something to be there besides lint, before his face falls slightly.

Booker’s rig is an Israeli military surplus laptop, incompletely wiped. It’s bulky and heavy, but overpowered and with encryption software he’s never seen anywhere else— perfect for looking for potential jobs and researching the ones Andy picks.

He pauses for a moment while he waits for it to boot up. He should have shown Nile or Nicky the boards he uses. It’s been a while since they could find jobs without the internet, and he just doesn’t think they teach that skill in the marines. Swallowing, he looks down, sees phantom blood splashed across his hands resting on the keyboard. No, he shouldn’t contact them again.

He’s seen traces of Eliot over the years, knows he’s active in those circles. If they need help, they can ask him.

One hundred years. Will he even know them?

He takes a swig from his flask and gets to work, digging into JRP’s financial reports. Once he has a handle on those, he can determine the number of security forces and everything else.

He’s deep in it by the time Alec is back, barely notices when his flask is replaced with a plate of toast and a glass of water. He eats absently, digging through years of tax and payroll records, forming a picture of the company from the top down, including a few multimillion dollar losses that weren’t reported to shareholders.

They probably can’t use that, not with just the two of them, but he notes it anyway before moving on. He’s not sure the tactics he normally uses are of any use either, better to just mark all the openings he can spot and they‘ll figure out their tactic when they’re ready. He doesn’t really know Alec’s skills other than hacking and computer work anyway.

Assuming Alec has any. A lot of the people on those boards don’t.

Despite Alec’s insistence on food, when Booker comes up for air a few days later, he doesn’t remember anything besides a few slices of toast and enough water to keep him alive.

Alec groans behind him, startling Booker into reaching for the gun strapped on the underside of the desk before he remembers.

Alec. Knows where Quynh is and is helping free her. Or will, once they have a plan.

It helps that Alec looks as freaked out as Booker feels, when Booker stands up to stretch, contemplating a shower or food. He’s not actually sure which he needs more.

He settles on a shower, hoping it will relax some of the muscles in his back. He might heal everything, but sitting hunched over for… more days than he thinks he knows still does a number on him, same as when he was carving coin stamps.

Alec looks vaguely ill when he comes back into the main room, standing over the stove moving something around in a pan with a spatula. He has something pulled up on his tablet, watching a black and white video, that he exits as soon as Booker comes close enough to see more than vague blurs. “Here, when the sausage is cooked through, add the tomatoes and tomato paste,” he instructs, snatching up his tablet and heading towards the bathroom.

It’s more effort than Booker would have gone to, but it’s already started. Biting his lip, he adds some of Nicky’s herbs— at least ten years old and musty, but who actually cares anymore— and a slug of red wine he drags out from under the sink. No reason to be complete savages.

When the water is boiling, he drops a box of pasta into the pot, giving it a brief stir before pouring more of the wine into a glass.

Alec is lucky he’s bothering with that much.

The pasta is ready the same time Alec comes out of the bathroom. Booker doesn’t say anything about the suspicious puffiness around his eyes, just dumps dinner into a couple of bowls and drops them on the table along with the remaining wine.

“Are we going to be able to do this?” He asks bluntly, picking up his fork. “Or are we just fucked?” He knows where Quynh is being held, knows the security forces at that building, knows how he would have taken it with a team. But alone? Or with only Alec? A couple shaped charges, a few semi-automatics and pistols, and various bladed weapons aren’t going to cut it.

He’s never been more than passable with a sword anyway.

Alec tilts his head, exhaustion pulling at him. “By the time we get there, we’ll have everything we need.” He eats a couple bites, takes a sip of wine before wrinkling his nose. “Having a team would be… better.”

Booker breathes through the bolt of pain, ignoring it. “Not an option. We… I can put you in contact with them, but it will take some time. If they acknowledge the message at all.”

Alec watches him for a moment and then nods. “Whatever you say. I’m working solo these days too.”

Booker had suspected he had a team of his own, but now with confirmation, he doesn’t want to push it. Not with how quiet Alec is being— even on the message boards, where everything is coded and professional, his personality had still shined through. This is a shadow, even if he’s pretending well.

“Just means we’ve got to get creative,” Alec says, fidgeting a little, like he wants to be back in front of his computer. “Most of what I’ve seen your team do has been paramilitary. You got any softer skills?”

“Not that will get us into a secured building. Unless you can hack physical hole into the building.”

Alec huffs. “I can do so much better than a hole in the wall.” Reaching behind him, he grabs his ever present tablet and presents it to Booker. “Congrats on you new job, Mr. Ian Chesterton. You start on Monday.”

“What?”

“We need inside access. They needed a new security guard— preferably ex-military given their existing resumes— and now they have one. No one on site actually does the interviewing, that all happens at the regional headquarters in Brussel. A couple of spoofed emails and… tada!”

Booker sighs heavily. “And I’m going in because…”

“For one, because a black guy, in the Netherlands? Too many eyes on me. Also, you’re better at the hitting sort of thing. I’ve never been any good.”

Booker raises an eyebrow in doubt before digging back into his food. He’s never heard of anyone who has lived their lives without violence, but maybe Alec has found a different way, a new way, something besides Andy’s endless wars.

Maybe if they weren’t dying every other week, this existence wouldn’t be so god damned depressing. (It would, he knows that the same way he knows that he will mourn his wife for the rest of his existence and Alec will mourn his partners. Some people, some lifetimes, change everything that follows.)

“And while I’m playing murderer for hire, what are you going to be doing?”

“Making sure all the records are deleted or corrupted; finding their dirty corporate secrets and making sure the right people know; forcing a sell down of their stock; setting up new lives for all of us…” Alec trails off, frowning at his plate, like he’s trying to remember a step that he’s forgotten. It’s similar to the look Joe wears when he’s trying to remember, and doesn’t that just make it all hurt even worse.

They finish their meals in silence, grief and hurt a palpable presence at the table. Alec silently does the dishes when they’re done while Booker starts the process of shutting down the apartment for another five to ten years or however long until he comes back here.

* * *

The others are laughing, but Eliot looks at Parker, horrified, and Nile isn’t sure why. “Let me get this straight. You… gave a big romantic speech about Nicky, killed the guards, and then _you stayed in the van_?”

Joe shrugs and waves a hand. “They used those plastic things instead of actual chains.”

“The door was locked from the outside,” Nicky chimes in, still gazing at Joe like he hung the moon.

“Plastic things,” Nile says flatly, finally grasping why Eliot and Parker are so horrified. “You couldn’t get out of _zip ties_?”

“Or a locked van?” Parker looks back and forth between them, occasionally glancing at Andy too. “Those are easy. British Museum easy.”

Eliot looks between the other three. “A child can get out of those. We’re fixing this. Now.” He starts up before falling back in his chair with a sigh. “Tomorrow. After I’ve run into town. Nicky, do you have a shopping list?”

“I will tomorrow,” Nicky says gravely, leaning back in his chair.

“While we’re picking up supplies,” Andy starts, and she’s unusually focused. Nile isn’t sure what’s caught her attention, but something has. “What do you and Parker need?”

“I have a stash,” Parker admits, somewhere between smug and statement of fact. “Not all my gear, but the necessities.”

Nile watches Eliot watch Parker, the softening of his face— he’s much easier to read than Parker— before he nods. “Anything else, darlin’?” She smirks silently, meeting his eyes fearlessly. Eliot huffs something like a laugh. “Five pounds crazy,” he mutters before turning back to Andy. “Clothes mostly. Not much else that I can’t scrounge from around here.”

“This isn’t the States, they don’t sell guns easily here.”

“Which would matter a lot more if I used guns anymore.” He says it flatly, no room for argument, but Nile has trouble comprehending what he’s saying somehow.

“You have to use a gun,” comes spilling out of her mouth before she can stop herself. “Even _Andy_ uses a gun.” She winces, too late to save herself.

Andy snorts. “I was using an axe for long before guns were even thought of. I adapted my skills to including them, but I’m never reliant on them, kid.”

“They’re loud,” Parker says. “The job’s already gone south if you’re using them.”

Nile still doesn’t know exactly what Parker is referring to when she says job. Or rather, she knows what she’s saying— Job, Mission, same difference— but her role on those jobs? Eliot’s been cagey, Parker just laughed (from on top of the fridge, hunched over a bowl of dry cereal), and Nicky and Joe don’t know either, despite having a better idea of where Eliot’s career has taken him.

“You just… punch your way through? Are you kidding me?”

Eliot glances out the window and then at Andy before nodding, once. “Come on, kid. Let’s go. Grab your pistol.”

She’s really starting to hate being called kid. She’s a fucking marine, goddamnit.

Pushing away from the table, she stalks towards the bedroom, snatching the pistol she’s claimed as hers from under her pillow. She shakes her head slightly, testing her hairstyle before nodding to herself and going back to the front of the house.

Parker has disappeared, but Eliot is waiting by the door, the others grabbing their jackets and pulling them on.

“What’s the play?” Nile asks, automatically ejecting the clip and the round in the chamber and passing them to Nicky. Even knowing she’s not going to die permanently, she doesn’t want to risk a stray round hitting anything important. Or anyone important, like Andy.

She doesn’t know what this is a training exercise _for_ , but she knows a set up when she sees one.

“You were stationed in Afghanistan?” Eliot frowns without waiting for a response. “Your goal is to kill me.”

“No,” she shoots back firmly. “I won’t. Not for some practice round.”

His eyebrows shoot for his eyebrows, but he accepts it. “Fine. What would be a killing blow.”

She nods, snapping her teeth shut before the automatic ‘Aye, Sergeant’ could escape, and heads out the door.

Eliot has her disarmed and in an arm bar before he’s completely out the door, her gun tossed somewhere to the side. She can’t even follow what he did, it was so quick.

“What the—“ She huffs as soon as he releases her, stepping back with his hands in his pockets. “How the hell did you do that?”

He gestures for her to pick up the gun again, stepping further into the yard. “Guns are tools. And they’re only useful in certain situations.”

“And you manage to avoid the situations where they’re useful?”

“Most people have no idea what the effective range for a gun is. Step inside that range and—“ he steps forward, grabbing her wrist and forcing it out and the side.

Pulling her knee up, she grazes his junk— enough to prove that she could— and forces him a step back. She ducks under the punch coming from his right, folding towards her captured arm and getting enough slack to spin under his arm. It twists her wrist out of his grip, and she rushes to grab hold of his wrist in turn.

Eliot lets go before she can get a good grip on his wrist to jerk his arm up, but she still has the gun. He drives his head backwards, bouncing it off her cheek bone.

Nile flinches backwards, releasing him. He kicks backwards, like a horse, hammering his heel into her shin and spinning around. She dances backwards, swinging a punch at his midsection with her left to buy some time.

Eliot walks into it, grunting, and grabs her arm, jerking her off balance. Nile stumbles over his outstretched leg. He pushes her as she passes, adding to her momentum until she’s tripping over her own feet.

Twisting around, she manages to land on her ass, bringing the pistol up. But she’s too slow, and he already has it out of her hand before she can even get her breath back.

Nile stares up at him and then at the others, who are leaning against the side of the house, watching. “Okay, so you’re even better than Andy.”

Joe starts laughing, burying his face in Nicky’s shoulder. “No one is as good as Andy. But Eliot makes her work for it.”

Andy looks pleased at the assessment, which might be the weirdest part of all of this— Andy smiling. “We’re not all the same. We’re very good, but we all have our preferences.”

She’d picked some of that up already, just watching how they work together. But she’s still trying to figure out where she fits in, what niche she’s going to fill or create that leaves her her own person instead of Booker’s shadow or replacement.

Grabbing Eliot’s outstretched hand, Nile lets him pull her to her feet, brushing her hands off on her pants. “Again?”

“Sure.”

She stays further back this time, or tries to. He keeps moving, making it hard to aim, and charging at her every time she skips backwards to get a better chance at aiming. It devolves into a game of tag somehow, chasing each other all over the yard until Nile decides to make her stand and actually finish the exercise. She moves under one of the big oaks that dot the yard, pausing to wait for Eliot to come around the corner of the house. She reaches for the pistol she’d stashed in the back of her jeans— her instructors at boot camp are screaming and don’t even know why— and comes up with… a sandwich?

Eliot tackles her into the dirt, football perfect, and rolls off her as they skid for a few feet.

“What happened to my gun?” Nile asks stupidly, staring at the (now dusty) sandwich. “Did I just… What?”

Someone giggles in the leaves above her, and then Parker appears, hanging by her knees from one of the branches. “Stole it.”

Nile stares up at her, at the blonde hair hanging within a few inches of her nose, and sighs. Bad situational awareness. She should have known where all the others were, including Parker. Parker, who had shown Nile what she was and a tiny peek at how good she was within twenty minutes of their first meeting.

Parker tosses the gun away and somersaults off the branch, landing on her feet. Coolly, like it’s second nature to go from upside down to on her feet in microseconds. Leaning over, she pulls Eliot up and then, more hesitantly, offers her hand to Nile.

Nile wants to brush it away, but this is the first time Parker has offered actual touch to someone not Eliot since they were picked up at the train station. Which is… something. Reach up, she takes it, and is pulled to her feet faster than she was expecting. Parker is frowning a little, so Nile nods, taking a step back, out of her personal space. “Thanks,” she says gruffly, shoving her hands in her pockets and heading towards the edge of the yard, where the gun landed.

The grass is longer here— it’s probably time to mow, but Nile isn’t going to be volunteering— and obscures the pistol so it takes her a few moments to locate it. When she looks back, they’re… not touching, but they’ve shifted together.

The same way Joe and Nicky do, she realizes. They don’t reach for each other very often, PDA in the wrong place is just another thing that can be used against them, but they’re secure in their relationship.

Comfort given and received in the space of a look, a softened grin or a wink.

Nile’s eyes drift to the house, with her phone and playlists and photos of her family. Suddenly, practicing with Eliot is the last thing she wants. She wants to go home, curl up on the couch with Joel and just… cry. But that’s not an option, so it doesn’t matter what she wants.

Taking a deep breath, she shoves the pistol back into her jeans and heads back towards the corner of the house where Andy and the guys are just now coming around.

“How’d it go?” Andy calls.

Nile forces a laugh, grabbing onto equilibrium with both hands. “He won again. With Parker’s help.”

Joe looks at her, frowning slightly. “What did she do?”

“Picked my pocket, replaced the pistol with a sandwich.” Nile gestures towards the two behind her. “I didn’t feel a thing. And then he tackled me.”

Andy hums and shrugs. “If it worked. You good to keep working?”

Nile straightens up and nods. Exercise has always been good for clearing her mind and right now, she’ll take any calm she can get.

“We got it, Andy,” Nicky says firmly. “You have more healing to do before you will be throwing Nile around again.”

Andy flushes angrily, even as Joe points her firmly towards the house.

“If you want to watch, boss, grab a chair.”

Joe nearly gets his head kicked off for that, Andy already shifting her weight when her stitches pull and put a damper on the urge. She pouts, but follows Nicky’s still outstretched arm.

The three of them wait until Andy has gone back into the house, before Nicky and Joe have one of their silent conversations and then they’re both focused on Nile.

“We’ll all learn from each other.” Joe grins, looking over Nile’s shoulder. “It will be fun.”

* * *

This is the most boring job Alec has ever done, and that includes the time he hacked the FarmVille servers to change the drop rate for some components. They have to move slow, because it’s just the two of them, but he never imagined it being _this_ slow.

Two weeks of nothing.

With Dr. Kozak dead, the work being done in her lab has ground to a halt. A single guard does a walk through every few hours, but Booker has only done it once. They need more information, and they need it soon.

The only upside is that their dreams have changed dramatically. Quynh is no longer drowning over and over. Instead, she is trapped in a small room. Alec isn’t sure she thinks it’s better, but for the first time in seventy-five years, he’s not choking on air when he wakes.

(Instead, he dreams of someone who can only be Nile practicing hand to hand with Joe or Nicky— not that he’s sure which is which— most nights. They bleed into his other dreams, so it’s Eliot showing her how to dodge that punch, Parker sitting on the counter while someone cooks.

He’s not sure waking up in tears is better than the drowning. He tells himself it is, and avoids talking about them at all.)

Booker passes through the living room, heading for the kitchen and the coffeepot like it will save him. He mutters good morning in what Alec thinks is probably French (somehow with a Italian accent), slopping the last of the pot into a cup and draining it almost as quickly.

“Any change?” Booker asks, peering at Alec’s monitor. “Or am I in for another evening of boring?”

Alec shrugs. “I thought we’d go tonight. Unless you can think of a reason to not.”

“This shitty coffee had me ready to go as soon as we got here.”

Alec shrugs, grabbing the flash drive off the table and tossing it to Booker. “Plug that into a computer on the network when you get a chance. I’ll let you know when I’m on site.”

Booker might want to argue, but he’s also barely awake and functional so Alec doesn’t really care what he thinks. He wants this job over, wants to set things up so he can disappear into his grief until he’s ready to reemerge and reinvent himself.

He keeps doing this, keeps reaching for hands that aren’t there, teasing grins that he’ll never see again. It’s getting harder every day to keep things hidden. Booker might be like him, they might be working together on this job, but they’re a long way from being family or even friends.

(Nana had told him, when he was a kid, lost and confused and missing his parents, that grief moves on its own schedule. He can’t speed it up or slow it down, just ride it out like the waves along the shoreline. That’s all he’s doing now too, riding the wave of disbelief until it crashes him into the rocks. They’re looming over him, but he’s still got a little time.)

Booker grunts, drains his coffee, and heads out the door. His shift starts at eleven, which means Alec has just over five hours to make sure everything is ready to go. He sets a timer, takes a swig of his soda, and gets back to work. Quynh’s paperwork needs to be perfect. She’s going to need time and money and something that’s just hers. At least until she’s ready to meet back up with her family.

Hopefully, she’ll take Booker with her. He shouldn’t be alone.

* * *

A few hours into his shift, Booker fumbles his phone out of his pocket and under one of the dayshift desks, cursing as he drops to his knees and crawls after it. The other guards laugh, the mocking laughter of idiots who don’t know the first thing about security. It gives him cover to plug Alec’s USB drive into the back of the computer on the floor before he re-emerges with his phone held triumphantly in hand.

“They get slipperier every year,” he grumbles, picking at a chip along the edge.

“Use less lube in the mornings,” Tony says crudely with a jacking off motion. The others laugh like the jackasses they are and Booker barely refrains from rolling his eyes.

One more night, then he can be done with these idiots forever.

“Better my left hand than missing sleep trying to please someone else,” he shoots back. They’ve all bitched about their girlfriends enough that he knows it’s a sore spot— barely getting to see each other and when they do, being too tired to make it good for her, which just adds more tension.

It will get worse when they have children, but Booker doesn’t think they need to know that yet. (Given the way they talk about their partners, he doesn’t think most of them will have children. And if they do, nothing good will come of it.)

He leans back in his chair, flipping through the cameras, and lets the chatter wash over him, tuning it out.

His phone buzzes just before three. “I’ll take the next walk through,” he says into a lull and holds up a cigarette. The rest of the team just nods absently, the post-lunch fatigue setting in.

It doesn’t take much to get Alec into the building, just a couple steps outside one of the emergency exit doors— one that’s constantly propped open for smokers— and a flare of a lighter. Alec slides through the doorway before Booker is halfway through the cigarette and he flicks the remains out into the parking lot, a glowing ember bright in the darkness.

They separate once they’re inside. Booker starts the walkthrough while Alec heads up the staircase to the third floor.

The problem with overnight security is that it is inherently _boring_. For all that this is a near state-of-the-art facility, bored guards miss things. As Tony stated when he was giving Booker the tour, ‘they do important work here, but it’s mostly offices.’ Even the labs are mostly for show or for a few scientists who would rather work here than at one of the larger facilities.

If JRP knew what they had, Quynh would be in Brussel or even the major labs in Denver. Not in the comparative backwaters of Netherlands. They had believed Kozak, but not enough to sink the tens of millions into her work that Merrick did.

Quynh’s cell is on the third floor, surrounded by labs. He’s explored this area before, checked all the labs and knows which of the scientists will have left things unlocked. Now it’s time to put that into use.

The outer door to Quynh’s cell unlocks with a swipe of his keycard, and then it’s just a matter of scrambling to unlock the cell door before any of the idiots downstairs notice something is wrong.

“I know you,” Quynh whispers in English, watching him warily through the bars. “My dreams. You’re immortal?”

“ _Oui_ ,” Booker says shortly, ransacking the desk for the keys. There are other ways but… yes, there they are. He swallows, shoving the key roughly into the lock and ripping open the door. “We need to leave. I don’t know how long we will have.”

They’ve given her medical scrubs to wear, so she has something, but it won’t last. Better than he expected, and there are some of Andy’s clothes at the next safe house. It will do, at least until she’s recovered enough to have an opinion on fashion.

In all of Nicky and Joe’s stories, they never mentioned Quynh being scared. Even Andy, the few times she could bring herself to talk about her, portrayed Quynh has someone who was never afraid of anything.

The woman in front of him is _terrified_ , backed into the corner of her cell like it will protect her. Afraid of him. “Where are the others? My brothers?”

“Away. Safe.” He thinks. Not here anyway. “Quynh, we need to _go_.”

She nods, once, and uncurls from the corner, marching through the door under her own power for probably the first time. Booker passes her the knife he keeps in his boot and she grins at him, sliding to watch his back like they’ve done this a hundred times.

Maybe they have. Watching them a couple minutes at a time for centuries… she’s been on every mission with them, every vacation they’ve taken, every time they sparred.

She’s not comfortable behind him, but they can work that out later. When they both know the building.

He heads up when they reach the stairs, past the fourth floor— where Alec joins them, backpack bulging— and onto the roof. Alec pulls out his phone, types something, and then hurries over to where Booker is setting up their exit off the north side of the building. “We’ve got two minutes.”

“Damnit,” Booker snarls, but tosses the ropes down, gesturing Quynh over. Alec looks shocked for a moment, but shakes his head. “Do you remember how to do this?” He asks her. “Or do you want to ride down on one of us.”

She sniffs, leans over the edge and shrugs. “I’ll meet you down there.” She already looks more alive than she did down in her cell. Climbing onto the parapet that surrounds the roof, Quynh spreads her arms wide, embracing the light breeze, and then jumps.

Alec curses quietly behind them. “I hate it when they do that.” He doesn’t waste any more time, grabbing one of the ropes tightly and stepping over the edge. Booker follows him a few moments later.

Quynh is already healed and half a block away when they catch up with her, just in time for a massive explosion to rip through the building at their backs.

Alec’s face is hard as he looks back, and Booker politely ignores the tears that are starting to gather in his eyes.

“That should slow them down,” Alec says after a few seconds and then he turns and starts walking.

Hard and cold is _not_ Alec’s default state. Booker suspects that whatever Alec has been running from has caught up with him, but they have bigger issues.

“Where do we go now?” Quynh asks. “Is there a place for us?”

Booker nods, looking at Alec’s back. “We have a safe house picked out for us. Then we can discuss getting you better acquainted with the 21st century. And rejoining the others.”

Quynh nods silently.

The car Alec leads them to is a generic sedan, a dirty white four-door with fast food wrappers on the floors. Booker hates it immediately.

Alec closes his eyes, clearly hurting, before pulling his bag in front of him. He passes Quynh and Booker a couple of envelopes before zipping up the bag. “Documents and bank account information. I’ll drop some more money in there after I do my thing.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Quynh asks.

Alec shakes his head. “I’ve not dreamed without drowning for nearly a century. You and Booker need to get to know each other, and return to your family.”

“You’re one of us too,” she starts, but Alec shakes his head harshly.

“One day I might be. But I’ve got some wrongs to take care of first. I know how to get ahold of Book when I need to.”

He’s going to disappear, Booker interprets. Do something with all the other information he stole from JRP, but mostly, he’s going to disappear and try to move past the past few weeks.

“Don’t grieve forever,” Booker says finally. “Your partners, whoever they were, deserve better than that.” He forces a sad smile. “Learn from my fuckups.”

Alec nods, reaching over and dragging him into a hug. “Horde will probably disappear. But you know how to reach me if you need a hand.”

Booker nods, swallowing and glancing at Quynh. They have time and once she’s gone, maybe he’ll be able to work up to having another partner. Once that will be around for his entire exile.

Alec tilts his head before taking Quynh’s hand, gallantly kissing her knuckles. “Be careful,” is all he says before resettling his backpack and hiking off without a look back.

They watch him go before climbing into the car and speeding out of the city.


	2. Chapter 2

**SIX MONTHS LATER…**

Even at the height of summer, Nile hates the steppes. She’s a city girl all the way through and hundreds of miles of grassland just seems _wrong_. But this is where Andy wanted to come— her homeland, Eliot had mentioned offhand— so this is where they are. Sweating and trying not to be a complete bitch about everything, but especially the _fucking_ horses.

Horses are for other people. Fantasy movies, or a couple of the girls from high school, the ones with rich cousins they spent summers with. Maybe in a field alongside the highway as she takes a bus back to base. Not for her.

Parker stays next to her while the others ride, eyeing the horses with distrust. “You don’t ride either?” Nile waves a hand towards the horizon, something like the direction the others have gone in. “I figured you’d be out there…”

“I saw a horse kill a man once.” Parker shudders dramatically. Nile looks over sharply, but Parker ignores her. “The clown stole his money and deserved it, but…” she bites her lip. “Should I be out there? With them?”

Nile shrugs, glancing over. “Only if you want to be. But you’re welcome to hang out here with me.” Parker is _weird_ , she’s discovered. Probably autistic, or at least, that’s what she would be called now, and has spend at least seven hundred years learning to cover it. Nile doesn’t think Parker even realizes that she’s picking yet another padlock while staring at the horizon.

Despite the age difference, they’re spending a lot of time together, figuring out how they fit into this team. It’s been an adjustment, for damn sure, but Nile thinks they’re almost through it

“So what’s on your mind,” Nile prods when Parker shows no indication of explaining why she’s out here in the open, on the ground, instead of the roof where she prefers.

“I was thinking about a job.” Parker opens another lock, drops it absently in the pile next to her, and picks up a new one. “They’re bored, you need an actual job that isn’t a horse, and I…” she screws her face up. “I need to do something I’m good at.”

“You’re learning,” Nile says pointedly. “Faster than I am.”

Parker shakes her head. “I still rely on Eliot. I can take care of myself, but beyond that,” she shrugs, looking up at the sky, maybe watching a hawk that’s floating nearby. “Survival has always been about moving faster and cleaner than whoever is coming after me. If I’m fighting, the job has already gone bad.”

Nile leans back on her hands, thinking it over. Parker has some skills— street fighting, no hold barred, similar to what Nile learned growing up— but she definitely relies on getting _away_ instead of putting her opponent into the ground. “So you want a job? What kind?” _And why are you bringing this to me_ , she doesn’t ask.

“Weapon trafficking.”

Not really what Nile was thinking, but she can go along with it. “So hunt down some terrorist and kill them?” Her hand creeps to her throat, massaging the scar that isn’t there.

“No.” Parker shakes her head. “Start at the top, work our way down.”

“That’s a frickin’ _campaign_ , not a job. Money, time… a shit ton more people.”

“You’re thinking about it like a soldier.” Parker smirks. “You need to think like a thief.”

“Andy’s going to go along with this? She’s never stolen something without a fight in her life.”

“We just need to convince her.”

Nile sighs. “I assume you have a target in mind, so walk me through it.”

* * *

Eliot looks towards the house as they approach the boundary between open grassland and the small area surrounding the house and barn. He doesn’t see any signs of trouble, but something feels… off. Now he just has to figure out what.

“What is it?” Nicky asks in Genoese, coming alert and loosening his sword. “Trouble?”

Eliot shakes his head, sliding off his horse and tossing the reins to Joe. “The girls being sneaky, I’m pretty sure.” But not completely. Never completely. Not after what happened at Merrick. Another company might still figure it out. “I’ll check it out.”

Breathing out slowly, he edges around the house, trying to put a finger on what is setting him off.

The Jeep is gone.

Not for the first time, Eliot curses not having Alec’s earbuds anymore with GPS locators and constant communication. As intrusive as they were, they made situations like this a lot less sticky.

Ok, the car’s gone, and he’s not seeing any sign of a fight. There’s no way anyone would be able to take Nile and Parker without an obvious fight. Willingly and under their own power then. Supplies maybe? They only went a few days ago but…

Frowning, he pushes the what-ifs aside and heads inside to check the house.

No Nile or Parker, but he does find a basket of padlocks in the kitchen and a notepad covered in the shorthand Parker uses while she’s planning jobs and isn’t ready to share yet. Not a supply run then, or at least, not food supplies. He can work with that.

Damnit, Parker. He glances over the notepad, but he’s never been able to read her shorthand, a cryptic disaster adapted from whatever Archie taught her back in the 80s and shortened again and again until entire concepts or building plans are a single symbol. (If nothing else, he’ll have decades to figure out how her system works— more ways to communicate is always better.)

Walking out the back door, he waves the others towards the barn, jogging across to pick up the reins of his horse and lead it inside.

“What’s going on?” Andy asks, dismounting with a grunt. She’s still watching the sky and grassland surrounding them.

Eliot shakes his head. “Nile and Parker took off for town. I’m not sure what they were after.”

“On purpose?” Andy asks sharply, head jerking around to stare at him.

“Unless you think anyone can force those two to do anything without also making a mess. Only one set of tire tracks— the Jeep— and not even a knocked over chair.”

He’s serious, but Andy’s been on edge for months. They all have. Merrick has all but gone under, their stock price plummeted like a stone after all the investigations were announced, and even their nearest competitor JRP has been uncertain— some ethics violation Eliot didn’t catch the details of— but there are others.

Other pharmaceutical companies. The Russian group Kozak was trying to sell to and their competitors.

Their secret is out, and it will be something they have to watch for for the rest of time.

Eliot sighs and heaves his saddle over the wall. “We can yell at them for not leaving a note when they get back. They will be back.”

They move quickly through putting away the tack and getting the horses brushed and settled. This is, actually, one of the few things he misses as time goes by. Something in him just feels more settled— horse care has never changed. Even the tools are mostly the same.

And if he needs to be on the back of a horse occasionally, he can’t imagine what it must be like for Andy, who claims she was riding before she could walk (she was definitely riding before she was Andromache).

He pushes it all aside, ignoring it. Parker’s planning a job, and she’s getting Nile involved. Time to stop fucking around then and focus, start getting ready for whatever she throws at them. In this crowd, that’s going to include playing the grifter. Slowly he breathes out and ignores the nerves that are creeping up on him. They’re unimportant. Because this isn’t a new crew, this is his family.

Ignoring Nicky and Joe’s bickering about dinner, Eliot showers and changes into looser fitting pants and goes back into the yard. He’s on his second repeat of Judo forms before the Jeep pulls up to the house, rattling over the gravel with Nile behind the wheel.

The laptop Eliot expects, the bags of food are appreciated, but the bags of clothing… “What’s the job?”

Parker smirks, grabbing the food bags. “It’ll be fun,” she says cheerfully. “We need to do a bit more research to see who’s going to be our baron, but the bodyguard positions will be mostly decorative, I think.”

He hates this plan already. “You run this by Andy yet? Or anyone else?”

“Eventually.” She brushes by him, barely, and heads into the house.

Eliot stares after her, clenching his jaw, before Nile’s slight motion draws his attention. “What’s going on?”

“Just thought you’d want some help with bringing things in,” she says lightly, reaching for one of the bags of clothes. “Sorry we took so long, by the way. Harder to get a computer that matched her specifications than we thought.”

“And prepping for the job.”

Nile shrugs. “I’m pretty tired of wearing the same two pairs of jeans and four shirts. I saw the opportunity and took it.”

“‘S’ok, kid. She’s ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. Ain’t blaming you.”

Nile snorts. “Gran used to say that. Normally looked less lovesick than you do, though.”

She’s probably right. He grabs the last of the bags and waits for Nile to get clear before shutting the back gate. “I never said I was any less crazy.”

Nile raises an eyebrow before heading into the house.

* * *

Joe winces as Parker and Andy’s volume bypasses loud and goes straight to screaming.

Taking the last dish from Nile, he looks over his shoulder to where Nicky is still sitting at the table. “A walk, _caro mio_? Or perhaps a night under the stars?” He leers, half-jokingly. The nights are still warm and no one will be getting any sleep in the house tonight, not with Andy and Parker at each other’s throats.

Nicky nods, pushing himself away from the table. “ _Si_. While you put the dishes away.” Grabbing his jacket, he disappears towards the bedrooms, presumably to arm himself.

Once upon a time, they didn’t feel the need for guns and knives while taking a walk in the middle of nowhere. Just another thing that Merrick has shattered. They’ll regain that security, he hopes, but right now… He can’t say he blames Nicky for feeling underdressed. He does too.

“You’ll be alright?” He asks, more because it’s polite than because he thinks Nile wants to come.

She shakes her head. “Our shopping trip put me behind. I need to study still. You two have fun.”

Joe grins at her, stacking the plates from dinner together and depositing them in the appropriate cabinet before coming back for the silverware. The voices in the other room have quieted to a dull murmur, low enough that he can’t overhear without trying a lot harder than he really wants to. Easier to let them fight it out and for him and Nicky to make their own decision later.

Nicky has a blanket slung over his arm when he comes back through, hiding whatever weapons he decided were necessary for an evening walk.

“Don’t wait up for us,” Nicky says quietly.

They’ve made a point of going for a walk like this every few days, sometimes with a picnic, sometimes without the blanket. It’s good to get some time away from the others, where they can lay aside their other roles and just hold onto each other.

They meander under the cover of darkness, using the half moon to navigate until they’ve gone far enough from the house. Spreading the blanket over the grass, Joe throws himself down before lazily turning over to watch Nicky.

“More brilliant than a summer’s eve,” Joe promises. “Your beauty can only be compared to the heavens and there be found wanting next to your wit and goodness.”

Nicky frowns, his face barely visible. “Not one of your better efforts, my heart.”

Joe shrugs, reaching up for him. “An attempt was made. I’ll come up with better later.”

Nicky smiles down at him before dropping down next to him. “I hear your poetry all the time, even when you’re not trying. A failed attempt or two won’t hurt anything.”

Joe hums, reaching for his husband. They stay quiet after that, watching the brilliant diamonds of the stars and splash of colors from the Milky Way trail above them. Eventually, watching turns to kissing turns to making out like the teenagers they haven’t been for centuries.

They stay out for hours, eventually dragging themselves back to the house and curling up together in the bed across from Eliot and Parker.

* * *

“What is taking so long?” Quynh demands, pacing behind him in the cramped Vienna apartment. “You said you could have weapons for us in hours— it has been days.”

“Most of our contacts have been burned,” Booker snaps, longing for the whiskey that’s been locked away. “The numbers you’re wanting? It is going to take time.”

What she wants is overkill, unless she’s planning on murdering everyone in the entire British Isle. He’s French, he can understand the appeal, but that goes against the entire ‘doing good’ thing Andy is so big on.

“I need weapons.”

“Yes, you’ve made that clear. But it doesn’t matter how much you need them. You can have good quality, good price, or seller discretion. At best, pick two. Most of the time, even that is questionable.”

She growls before stalking off to do… something. He’s not quite sure what she’s doing when she disappears back into the bedroom for a few hours, but since it doesn’t involve her breathing down his neck, he’ll take the reprieve.

Blowing out a sigh, he checks for messages— nothing, still— and settles down to investigate a potential job. Freelance work that pays cash and get them a reputation.

Booker probably didn’t need to start them from scratch, but it felt wrong to use the contacts and accounts he put together before for this. He and Quynh, if they take jobs at all, aren’t a team of four, aren’t nigh impervious, don’t have the luxury of taking only the jobs they want to take.

Well, she wants to take no jobs, but is slowly coming around.

Three months to get her basically acquainted with the twenty-first century and another three for her to come up with a plan. That she refuses to tell Booker. He can only follow along with her demands and hope that eventually, it makes sense. Or that there’s enough to make it worth contacting the others.

A message pops up, asking if he’s still looking for a quick job. They hammer out the details quickly and he pulls up the bank account that he has only for this purpose. Once the deposit goes in, he signs off and heads towards the bedroom.

“Quynh?” He knocks quietly on the closed door. “Can I come in?”

She makes a vague noise that might be assent, so he pushes open the door, bracing himself for he doesn’t know what.

The nice part of explicitly expecting nothing is that when he walks in on her in the middle of some complicated yoga position— her back arched like a bow, her nose is almost touching her foot— he can just raise an eyebrow before turning his back on the spectacle and dragging his shirt off.

“You’re leaving.”

“Found a job,” he says shortly. “Two, maybe three days. And then I’ll be back.”

“I could come with you? To… watch your back.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t want to bring anyone unexpected on this one.” He’s not even completely sure what he’s helping move, other than being pretty sure he’s not being paid five grand to move a couch. Drugs, he thinks, or some other smuggling operation.

He ignores her unhappy noise to toss some clothes into his bag before pulling out the box of spare handguns and knives from under the bed. He grabs two guns and three knives, wrapping them in an old t-shirt that should have been tossed ages ago. “Try not to start a turf war with the neighborhood gang.”

Booker is out the door in just a few more minutes, hiking towards the nearest subway stop.

* * *

The job is boring as hell and over-staffed for a simple border crossing. It’s beneath his skill level, but again, he needs more of a reputation for working solo. Waiting around, staring into the forest and waiting for something to happen? Easy money.

Mostly, he’s just waiting for the double cross— no matter what they’re carrying, they hired too many people. (He’s also just curious now to see what could possibly be worth this much trouble.)

The shooting starts before he even sees movement in the trees, a bullet whizzing by his ear to embed itself in a nearby tree. Dropping down with a muffled curse, Booker tries to spot the shooters.

They came prepared, knew exactly what they were walking into. They’re in professional camouflage, hard to spot in the dark even when moving, instead of the flat black that most armies for hire use. Sweeping through the forest, they maintain line of sight with their comrades.

Professionals, potentially still with their state sponsor, and looking for something.

Taking a few seconds to work out a plan of action, he belly crawls to where he expects someone to pass and lays in wait.

He brings the man down with a crash, a stray round lodging in Booker’s thigh. It hurts like a mother, but he has plenty of practice at ignoring pain. It will fade soon enough. Pulling a knife, Booker presses his knee into the soldier’s stomach, dragging the knife across his throat quickly and jumping up.

A bullet burns into his chest and then he’s tackled to the ground. He coughs, flinching at the blood that splatters across his hand and the soldier’s face. Grabbing the other man’s belt, Booker strains for leverage and flips them so that he’s on top. He’s lost his knife somewhere in bushes, leaving him scrabbling for a knife, pistol, anything before he loses consciousness.

The soldier yells something Booker doesn’t bother to listen to, his vision going dark at the edges as he finally manages to grab the pistol at the back of his waistband, shooting the soldier under him in the throat.

Booker falls to the side, gasping for air as his lung finally collapses. Coldly, he realizes that he’s in more trouble than he expected when he accepted this job this morning. Lungs and guts always take forever to die from or heal, and now he’s stuck in the middle of an Austrian forest dying alone.

Again.

Fuck, he should have brought Quynh with him, or at least told her where he was going.

He tries to muster up the strength to cut his own throat, or shoot himself in the head— anything to make this go faster— but can’t. He’s stuck dying slow, drowning in his own blood.

Someone kicks him in the side, exploding the air from his newly rebuilt lung. It rattles in his chest as he’s rolled over. He’s not completely healed yet, but he’s not dead either. Time to get out of this situation.

Booker explodes upwards, no longer giving a shit about who he ends up stabbing or shooting. It doesn’t matter anymore, any witness might lead back to JRP or Merrick or Christ knows who else. Might set up the same clusterfuck as happened in April.

Even if he had nothing to do with it, his family won’t be so kind the next time they’re exposed.

He jams the pistol into the guy’s chest and pulls the trigger, dropping him as soon as the bullet has discharged. Spinning around, Booker watches carefully for anyone else before crouching next to the body. Moving quickly, he strips it of weapons, pocketing the knives, pulling the semi-automatic over his shoulder, and shoving the extra ammunition into a different pocket.

It only takes a few minutes to get back to where the exchange was supposed to happen. The ground is littered with bodies— gang members and military— and Booker has no idea what happened here. Or if it's actually military. They don’t normally leave the bodies behind.

Frowning, he checks the cars to see if any of them are drivable. All but one of them have holes in the radiators at least, possibly more— the entire clearing reeks of gunpowder and gasoline. The last one has a cracked windshield and bullet holes in the body, but the engine appears to be fine.

The first order of business is to get the fuck out of here. Taking a deep breath, he turns the key— still in the ignition— and shoves it into drive. He’ll worry about what exactly he’s carrying with him later.

Rolling forward, he has to hit the gas to climb over some debris. And then the world is awash in noise and flame and pain as the explosion takes him.

* * *

Andy keeps her arms at her sides, standing against the wall along with all the rest of the bodyguards and security. There’s enough alcohol flowing past her on an endless river of trays that she could probably steal some without it being obvious… but that wouldn’t be ‘professional.’ Six thousand some-odd years and she’s never given a shit about being professional— people hired her or they didn’t, none of this fancy cocktails and champagne while discussing how many guns one needs to start a small land war.

If you need guns at all, you’re doing it wrong.

But this is her role during this stupid scheme, so here she is, looming against the wall along with the rest of the (obvious) security teams.

Joe and Nile pick up new glasses from a tray Nicky— dressed as a waiter— presents them, and settle at one of the standing tables near Andy. Close enough she can interfere if anything gets out of hand, but far enough she can’t actually eavesdrop.

If Book were here… except he’s not. And won’t be for years.

She stops herself from shifting, professional damnit, and watches the other bodyguards stationed around the room. They don’t talk to each other, although a couple of them speak into earpieces on regular intervals. Those are for the guests that are into conspicuous wealth and can’t take care of themselves then.

They watch their patrons too carefully, one of them is downright nervous, nearly darting away from his position to drag a mousy little man away from… someone.

The rest of them stand against the wall, watching the entire room and only moving if voices are raised. But it never comes to actual intervention. For a crowd of shitbags looking to buy as many black market weapons they can get their hands on, they’re remarkably civilized.

Their mark, Donovan Loomis, makes his way to Joe and Nile, shaking Joe’s hand and kissing Nile’s fingers, as if it wasn’t obvious that he thought he had good manners. Nile laughs, withdrawing her hand as politely as possible, and says something back.

Why didn’t Andy insist she be the arm candy? So she could actually hear what’s going on instead of just… watching?

(Because she’d tried and been shot down with several very pointed remarks about what she does to people who touch her without permission. Parker had grinned at her and then Eliot, fiddling with a fork.)

Joe and Loomis fall into a discussion while Nile looks increasingly uncomfortable. At a certain point, Nile has enough, and she reaches down to explicitly remove Loomis’ hand from her ass, firmly pressing his hand to the table with implicit threat.

Andy meets her eyes, wondering if Nile wants to handle it herself.

Nile shakes her head slightly, a calm smile crossing her face as she smashes Loomis’ hand under the heavy bottom of Joe’s highball glass. Not enough to break his hand, but enough to get the point across that she could. Her laugh tinkles above the general chatter, loud enough for Andy to hear, but not enough to be disruptive. It sounds on edge, but Andy doesn’t think anyone else will notice.

Loomis sticks around for a few more moments before wandering over to the next guest. Andy watches him as he works the room before he grabs a drink off a nearby tray and makes his way to the front of the room.

“I would like to thank everyone for coming. All too often, this sort of soirée devolves into violence, this is not a profession that is known for its restraint after all.” He keeps talking, but Andy tunes him out, focusing on the guests and bodyguards and who might be trouble.

The mousy man with the overly excitable bodyguard stands alone, clutching a wine glass in one hand. He looks familiar, but no matter how she racks her memory, she can’t place what she knows him from. Perhaps he hired them for a mission a few years ago— he definitely looks like someone who has more money than sense.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, letting her know that Parker has finished her part of the job, planting the bugs and doing something with the computer. Andy isn’t sure exactly what. They really do need a computer expert again. Parker, Eliot, and Nile have cobbled together enough knowledge to keep them busy, but none of them can help with the stuff that Booker always did.

Nile withdraws a small card from her clutch and handing it to one of the waiters with a quiet word. The man nods and disappears into one of the doorways at the back of the room.

And that’s their part of the plan done. So they can leave anytime they have an opportunity.

Loomis wraps up his speech and extends a hand towards the mousy guy. “Mr. Zhuk asked for a moment of time this evening. He has news that will benefit everyone in our sector.”

Zhuk grins, looking around the room. “Our medical supply source is again available. We have arranged to expand the offerings as well. Without having to go to all the trouble of identifying likely resources.”

A chill runs down Andy’s spine as she watches the effects of that news on the room. The buyers are mostly stoic, but the bodyguards visibly perk up. Medical, no weapons, of more interest to the people whose lives are actually on the line… shit. Organ transplants, and cheap ones. That means finding an infinite source. Her fingers itch to open fire on everyone in the room, to end this ‘news’ here and now so they can come up with a plan and a headcount.

She knows who they have though. There’s only two options and Booker is too smart to get captured again.

They have Quynh, somehow. The coffin rusted open finally, a team repairing one of the trans-Atlantic cables dragged her up, she tore herself to shreds and revived outside, Andy has no idea, just an explosive need to murder everyone between her and Quynh.

Swallowing roughly, Andy forces herself to remain still, eyes roaming and committing every face to memory. This job just got a lot bigger than taking out yet another weapons trafficker.

Joe has made the connection too, meeting Andy’s eyes with a small nod. He mumbles something quietly to Nile before meeting Nicky’s eyes as he approaches their table again. They’re all on the same page, now to get the fuck out of here.

Nile makes a show of pulling out her phone, tapping it to check the messages left there before sliding it back into her purse and excusing herself. Andy discreetly follows her back to the restrooms, acting like Nile is her main client.

The restroom is terribly overdone, fake Baroque decorations gleaming under the fluorescent lights from the last renovation. She assumes there are listening devices hidden in the decor, even if Andy isn’t going to waste time trying to find them. Nile disappears into one of the stalls while Andy checks for anyone else in the room.

“That announcement is exciting,” Nile says archly. “The amount of losses every year that could be preventable…”

“If what they claim is true, Ma’am.” She hates it, but she can pretend this is like any other job. It’s rare enough that they can talk like this in this sort of situation. “If your English and French competitors can put a stop to it…”

“Yes, we will need to do something about them.” Nile exits the stall, crossing to wash her hands. Under the cover of the running water, she meets Andy’s eyes. “We’ll get her back.”

Andy nods once, sharply, pretending she’s not as adrift as she feels. There’s still this mission to finish, her boys out in the gala and Eliot and Parker off doing… something.

Holding herself back, she follows Nile back to the party, retaking her position next to the wall and wills herself into stillness. They’re almost done, it can wait until later.

They don’t win the weapons they were theoretically bidding on, not that they were trying too hard. They only needed an excuse to see who Loomis was selling to and access to his offices. Andy thinks Parker wanted to see how well they’d work as a team too, before trying a big event.

She follows Joe and Nile to the car finally, taking the wheel and driving them through a very circular route, back to the hotel where they’re based. Eliot, Parker, and Nicky arrive a few minutes after them.

The rooms are nice, but not excessive. Nile and Joe immediately start stripping once the door is closed behind them, groaning like they were the ones standing motionless against the wall all night. Andy snarls when Nile approaches the bathroom. She wants that shower, wants hot water raining down on her back and shoulders.

Nile holds up her hands. “Just want to brush my teeth, Andy. You can have the shower.”

(If there is anything good about the twenty-first century, Andy is certain that it’s the expectation of bathing alone or with your partner. She doesn’t mind sharing a bed— misses it sometimes— doesn’t care that she’s seen Nicky and Joe having sex more since WWI than she has in centuries, but not having to share her bath is… _almost_ worth everything else.)

Nodding, Andy jerks her head towards the bathroom, pulling off her armor and weapons. The others are here, she can relax and let them guard while she’s washing today away.

“We got what we needed,” Eliot greets her when she comes back out of the shower, looking almost excited. “Where he’s getting them, where they’re going.”

“The Orlav’s have Quynh,” Joe says flatly. “Russian, very bad.”

“No.” Eliot shakes his head, looking between the four of them. “I blew up the samples. And Kozak. How would they have even known…”

Crossing the room, Andy grabs his neck, pulling his forehead against his. “It might be a new development. It sounded like it was.”

Parker shakes her head, perched on the desk and bent over the laptop. “Kozak was working three ends, trying to get the most money out she could. I’ll need JRP and Orlav’s records. This wasn’t Kozak’s doing.” She pauses. “We take down Loomis first. We’ve already made the approach and he knows us. He can’t be allowed to think about us or do in-depth research. Quynh will have to wait— Orlav and Zhuk won’t be moving very quickly. Not if they want to keep the prices stable.”

“Parker—“

She jerks her head no, looking up at Andy. “You wanted to do some good. This is how.”

It kills her to know that Parker is right. They can pivot this job into Quynh, but not the other way around, and it’s taken weeks worth of setup just to get this far.

Fuck she hates England. So goddamn much.

“She’s right, Andy,” Nicky says, a cruel echo to her own thoughts. “Thousands will die.”

“And what if it was Joe!” She snaps, her nails digging into her palms. “We know where she is, Nico. And you want me to walk away?”

Nicky drags her over to the foot of the bed, pulling her into his arms. “It is because of my love for Joe that I know, Andromache. He would not want me to sacrifice so many to save him a matter of weeks earlier. Nor would Quynh demand this of you,” he tells her in Genoese. “You are not walking away, you are preparing to fight the battle on your terms.”

Warm hands grab her shoulders, El and Joe offering their support the best way they can. Her boys.

“‘Sides,” Nile starts, “We don’t know where she is. We can find her, but it’s gonna take time.”

“Get Copley on it,” Andy orders, blinking away the angry tears. “Maybe he can actually be useful.”

Nile nods, moving to stand next to Parker. They murmur near silently to each other and Andy tunes them out.

Andy leans in to Nicky’s shoulder, trying to calm down so she can fucking _think_. Taking a deep breath, she focuses on the things that matter. The mission. Her team. The very mortal and very annoying need for sleep. “Parker, you know what needs to happen next in this scheme?”

Parker glances up and nods. “We should be able to find the hook and bait it with the information we got tonight. Once we hook him, he’s ours.”

“Message sent to Copley,” Nile announces, setting the laptop aside and closing it. “I’ll let you know what he says.”

“Right. Bed,” Eliot says, clapping his hands together. “Get some rest, tomorrow will be hard.”

It’s such a Nicky thing to say that Andy twists around to look at him. He grins at her, open and charming, like she’s going to believe his bullshit… but she is tired. And so is everyone else.

Yawning, she nods, briefly mourning the loss of Joe’s warmth behind her and moving to the bed she’s sharing with Nile.

The rest will keep.

* * *

There should not be the smell of tea in his apartment at this hour of the day. If his caffeine has to be hot, he prefers coffee— tea is only for when he’s coming off a four day coding binge and then it’s peppermint or lemon.

So if there’s tea in his apartment, someone else brought it.

Alec looks at the window next to his bed and the fire escape beyond it and decides he’d rather know what he’s running from this time. It’s possible that its someone he doesn’t mind knowing where he is, after all. And he can always escape later if it turns out he does mind.

(Really, this apartment has just about outlived its usefulness for day to day living anyway. He’ll leave, sell the building to himself through a few shell companies, and not touch it again until the current residents have moved out or died.)

Pulling on a clean t-shirt with a sigh, he pulls the pistol from his bedside table before walking into the living room.

And stops dead. “What are you doing here?”

Sophie looks up from her crossword puzzle, a tea cup steaming next to her. “I was wondering when you would be waking up. Kettle’s hot if you’d like a cup.”

He ignores her, grabbing an orange soda from the fridge before turning to look at her. “You shouldn’t even know about this place. Why are you _here_ , Sophie?”

“James would like a word about that mess last spring. He thought you’d leave if he showed up at your door.”

Alec mentally adds fifteen more shell companies and a second generation before he can live here again for longer than a few days. Fuck, he likes this building too.

“That mess last spring,” he says flatly. “The mess where El— and Pa—…” his voice breaks and damn that too. “They died, Sophie. And I don’t know why.”

She looks like she wants to give him a hug, and if he were any closer, he’d let her. But instead, they’re the length of the kitchen table apart, and won’t be getting any closer. Not if Sterling is now ‘James.’

“They both went to see him,” she admits, wrapping her hands around the tea cup. “Said Merrick wasn’t your doing, and not much else.”

“Murder isn’t generally our style.”

“Neither are explosions, and yet.” She sighs and takes a sip of her tea. “Talk to him. No badges, no sides.” There’s a glimmer of tears in her eyes, and Alec breaks.

“Fine. But not here.” His heart still aches, and he thinks it always will at this point, but maybe answers will help. The answers he hadn’t gone after because it hurt too much. “Let me get dressed, I’ll be out in a second.”

He takes his time, carefully packing his essentials into a backpack that he slings over his shoulder and setting his laptop to upload everything one last time before wiping itself. He’ll call Auntie Maria downstairs in a couple days, ask her to shut the place up while he’s away.

Their rings are the last thing, three of them strung together on a chain just long enough to hide under his shirt. He drapes them over his head before grabbing his jacket and the backpack.

“Let’s go,” he says harshly, and takes something like pleasure in how her eyebrows jump.

Sterling has set up shop in one of the local coffee shops, a demitasse of coffee in front of him and an empty plate. He looks… old, hair thinning and graying, new wrinkles and weight gain. It’s enough to make Alec take a second look at Sophie and…

Somehow it never occurred to him over the last ten years that he might be forever twenty-four, but that’s not true of anyone else. Something about that tickles his brain, but he puts it aside for now. It can wait until later, after this interview-slash-reunion.

They manage small talk and pleasantries between the waiter taking their orders and bringing the three coffees and a plate of pastries over. Alec isn’t particularly hungry, but it will give him something to do. Sophie ordering them at all is a sign that she wants to mother him.

“You’re a hard man to find,” Sterling says. “I don’t think I would have found you at all except for Sophie.”

“That was the idea. To be alone for a while,” Alec points out. “What do you want to know?”

“You had nothing to do with Stephen Merrick’s death?”

“He fell out of a window. It would have been much cleaner if we had been involved.” Probably. Men sometimes jump out of windows when they’ve lost their life’s work, but they don’t aim for that to happen. They aim-- aimed-- for financial ruin and jail time.

They’re not monsters, no matter what Sterling might think.

“He fell out a window, with a second person, after his entire security force was killed,” Sterling says pointedly. “And the security footage of the attack was erased afterward.”

“We were in Austin, when all this went down. They were on a date, I was working on a project.” He shrugs, hating every part of this. There have been times in his life where he wouldn’t have minded taking credit for that work, but now? Well, now he’s trying to figure out how to do something with his life.

“I know,” Sterling admits. “It didn’t feel like one of your jobs.”

Sophie sips her coffee and takes a delicate bite of one of the pastries. “Merrick isn’t the problem anyway. Although someone did splash their dirty laundry out in public a few weeks later.”

“Human experimentation is nothing to cheat your way through,” Alec says blandly. “Putting profits ahead of people…” he shakes his head, fully aware that they’re going to see right through him. He doesn’t care— if Sterling wanted to arrest him for something, they wouldn’t be playing this game.

“The EMA and NHS are taking a dim view of it, yes.”

Good. He’s not a doctor, but some of the information in those files was enough to turn his stomach. “I don’t know what I can tell you that you don’t already know.”

“The lead scientist for Merrick died about two weeks after Merrick himself. In an explosion, along with a man known to be engaged in human trafficking and organ transfer.”

Alec nods, his fingers tightening around his coffee cup as he blinks rapidly. “Plus two underlings from one of the Russian mobs and two others. They set the explosion and then died in it.” He’s gone over the footage forwards and backwards, watched Eliot set the bombs so that the only ones hurt were the ones involved in the meet, so they died and whatever merchandise they were exchanging burned to ash.

He doesn’t know why, or what, but he knows Parker was there either as backup or to talk Eliot out of it. Before she got caught up in the explosion too, buried under concrete and brick.

“Kozak was triple dealing. We believe JRP Pharmaceuticals caught wind of her double cross and arranged to hire Spencer to ensure they got the samples Orlav was buying.” Sterling sniffs. “Whatever Spencer was planning, we assume it was to destroy the merchandise so no one could have it.”

“Obviously.” Picking up one of the pastries, Alec bites into it, pretending it doesn’t turn to ash in his mouth.

“What was the merchandise, Hardison?” Sophie asks urgently. “You know everything about us. Surely you know this.”

“Thanks,” he grits out bitterly. He knows everything about them except why his partners would… “The only thing that makes sense is biotech or other medical samples. Maybe full organs— her reports were full of tissue biopsies and immortal cell lines.” He pauses as a thought comes to him.

If a doctor got a hold of him and started poking around… medical testing would be the least of the things he’d be expecting. A test subject that just comes back after being killed? That’s… hell, most of the ethical doctors he’s ever met would be salivating over the possibilities, let alone the motherfucking CEOs of pharmaceutical companies.

Fuck. Booker’s team…

Booker never said why he was suddenly kicked off his team, but if they’d been captured, even if JRP had Quynh at the same time, of course Kozak would have taken samples and tried to sell them on. Why bother with corporate espionage when she can make a hell of a lot more money off selling entire organs?

“She found a way to grow organs, cheap,” Alec says slowly. “Convinced both Merrick and JRP to fund her research, both thinking they would gain access to the results. And then she sold the organs themselves through the Russians. It’s all profit for her, the companies take the risk, and who really cares about how she managed to make that happen, it’s all details.”

He’s missing something, but until he can get his hands on the complete records for Merrick, there’s not a lot more he can fill in. Eliot had left first, barely bothering to say goodbye, but then he didn’t do anything for three days after he got to London. Visited an identity broker (inferior to what Alec could make for him) and a coffee shop, and then… the explosion.

He keeps running over everything in his head, letting Sterling and Sophie talk around him while he figures out what he needs to do.

“Alec,” Sophie says eventually, pulling him from his spiral. “You’re certain that you don’t know why Parker would have called me? Or why Eliot would have stopped by to see James?”

“Sterling, no idea. You… what did she say?”

“Someone was sending me an unwanted gift.” She waves her hand. “You know how she was, trying to talk around something. I only got that I needed to get away from where I was and then James picked me up from the airport.”

Sophie was in danger, so Parker sent her to the only person with the law on his side they trusted even a little. And now they’re trying to work out this mystery together. Alec watches Sophie’s hands as she picks up her coffee.

They’re not wrinkled, really, she’s not that old and she does a lot of work to always look her best. But the skin looks thinner. And she’s hiding a touch of silver in her hair. She’s getting older too, made more abrupt because he’s not seen her face to face in years.

He hadn’t noticed. Because… Parker and Eliot… also hadn’t aged. Grabbing out his phone, Alec hurriedly searches through his encrypted photos, pulling up a couple headshots of Parker and overlaying them. Then he does it again with Eliot.

They look the same, they’ve not aged.

And if they haven’t aged— and really, he should have noticed that far earlier than now, they’ve been at the top of their game for decades for fucks sake— then they’re probably like him. And didn’t die in the explosion.

Holy shit.

“I need to go,” Alec blurts out. “There are some things about this job that I need to clean up.” He doesn’t bother to say anything else, just shoves his phone back into his pocket and takes off.

He needs relative privacy, an internet connection, and time. And probably not much of the last. Grimacing, he heads towards the train station, buying a ticket to the first train that passes and a transfer at the next big city. It’s sloppy and bad security, but Sterling isn’t here to arrest him. A little messy on the extraction is fine, not like he’s going to even stay on this continent much longer.

He thinks. Probably.

Facial recognition scans for Parker and Eliot both at the main points of entry for France from the UK, excluding the passenger trains, including the freight trains. Parker is good, but they would have needed to get food from somewhere.

Thinking about it, he adds a third search, for the young woman he had spotted with Eliot back in the coffee shop. She fresh out of the military, doesn’t have the practice at avoiding cameras Parker and Eliot do.

Alec finds her— Nile, according to Booker— first, waiting on a ferry to cross to France, then a series of gas stations and traffic cameras dotted across France, Belgium, and Germany. Nothing for the last three months, but that’s already a lot more information than he had before.

Alec dicks around on his phone for a few minutes, trying to think of what to try next. They’d spent some time in Germany, but when they can go literally anywhere, where would they go?

Knowing what names they were traveling under would help, but he’s done more with less. He’ll get there.

He settles back in front of his computer, ready to start running probability searches.

* * *

“ _Xin chào_?” The screen of the phone didn’t have a name when it lit up, but she’s spent enough time watching to know how to answer it. And Booker had told her that no one he didn’t trust had this way of contacting them. “Booker?”

“I’m trying to reach him,” the voice on the other side says cautiously. “He hasn’t been responding to the messages I sent.” He sounds familiar, but not Nicky, Joe, or Eliot. And they wouldn’t be breaking Booker’s exile she doesn’t think.

“Who is this?” She asks flatly. She should recognize any voice calling.

“Quynh?” He sound puzzled and tired, like he’s on his horse’s last legs. “I thought he was going to get you set up on your own.”

“No.” She pauses, tilting her head. “The one who helped him. Who did things with typing.”

“We didn’t really bother to stop for introductions, did we. Although we’ve been dreaming of each other…” He trails off. “Alec,” he says finally. “Or at least that’s close enough.”

Quynh nods. “Booker had a job.”

Alec makes a frustrated noise, almost growling into her ear. “Shit. Okay. When he resurfaces, have him call me? I… need some information.” He hangs up without saying anything else, leaving her staring down at a dark screen.

Booker left two weeks ago. If no one knows where he is, she’ll just have to get him back herself. He’s _hers_ , not even Andy’s, not if she’s going to discard him. And she’s always been good at keeping track of her toys.

* * *

Sebastien blinks back to awareness already screaming. It hurts, Mother in Heaven, it _hurts_ , burning emptiness in his gut. He runs out of air before he runs out of pain, panting against his restraints, nearly gagging on his own tongue.

A gloved hand slams him back against the bed, roughly pressing him down as a second pair of hands tighten the restraints. He rolls his eyes around the room, trying to get a better grip on where he is, but if he’s learned anything, it’s that one lab looks much like another. This one isn’t as fancy as Merrick’s, but does that really matter when that’s his _liver_ they’re packing away into plastic and ice?

The burning slowly lessens, healing the way it always does, the pain tapering off into nothingness. Masked medical figures, further obscured by paper gowns and hoods, move around him quickly, passing materials back and forth.

Sebastien shivers— he’s always cold coming back, constantly freezing in a Russian winter— and lets his head loll to the side. The medics ignore him, busily packing up small coolers before a runner spirits them out of the room.

“One hour,” one of the hooded figures announces in Russian. “Take a break, there tea in the next room.” They all file out, ignoring Sebastien like he’s not even there. Worse, he’s there, but he’s just a thing: a constantly regenerating, organ making _thing_.

Even the orderlies leave, abandoning Sebastien to pain and silence, broken only by the occasional hiss of something behind him or the beep of a monitor. Straining against the straps, he tries to wiggle free.

But they’ve strapped their prize down tightly and he can’t move. He’s left to stare around the room, the creeping fear of being captured slowly paralyzing him.

“Next order is for a heart and a bladder,” a man announces as they file back in, consulting a tablet. “A kidney and both lungs for the order after that.” He pauses, scrolling through whatever he’s looking at. “Oh, and four skin grafts. One of the Sicilian families had a house fire.”

The doctor nods, snapping fresh gloves on. Sebastien flinches, instinct demanding that he duck away even if he can’t move.

“Grafts first,” the doctor decides, nodding at the functionary. “We’ll get the innards while he’s healing from that.”

He can’t move his head to watch, so his only clues are pressure and then, seconds later, pain. The knife is sharp and cuts deep. Probably deeper than they really need, but of course they’re going to err on the side of caution.

The pain doesn’t start until later, as they’re lifting the flap of skin away from muscle and tissue. Cold air rushes in to parts of his body never meant to touch air and it sets them alight, his thighs screaming, the gap filling with blood faster than he can heal. Blood trickles down the inside of his thigh, somehow managing to be ticklish despite the agony only a few inches away.

His leg jerks, flinching away from everything, and the doctor curses. One of the orderlies grabs Sebastien’s leg, pulling it out straight and leaning on it, so it can’t move. He’s pinned, completely and utterly, and they’re skinning him alive and…

This is what he sentenced Joe and Nicky to, what would have killed Andy. That he’s in this position now is only because of his own stupidity. Giving up the pretense, he sobs and screams, lets the pain out the only way available to him.

The lead doctor rolls his eyes above his mask, laying a hand-sized piece of skin aside on a tray before picking up his scalpel again and getting back to work.

The second patch— just as big, as deep— comes from his inner thigh, the delicate skin parting under the knife in starbursts of pain and fire from his groin nearly to his knee. He can feel his consciousness starting to slip, going hazy and then black around the edges.

Someone slaps him, a sharp spike of pain so different from what’s happening on his legs. Forcing his mouth to form words, he manages to blurt out, “Yeah, boss. I’m here,” before realizing that it wasn’t Andy knocking him around, pissed that it was taking him so long to come back.

“Our _podopytnyi krolik_ has a boss? Others who are just like him?” The doctor squints at him before looking towards the minor functionary. “More farms, more profit.”

“I’ll make sure Orlav knows,” and then they shift into a different dialect and Sebastien can’t follow it anymore, not on top of the pain and everything else.

He blacks out again when they slice down his chest, giant cutters coming out to snap through his rib cage.

* * *

Nicky watches through his scope as Loomis shoots his last customer through the head, barking orders to the minions that surround them. He can’t hear what they’re being ordered to do, but he can guess— find the money and any weapons, burn the records. They’ve all been very predictable as the team has worked its way through the entire supply chain.

Joe’s hand, nearly hot compared to the cold air, rests on his back, between his shoulder blades. “The others are clear,” he whispers.

Nicky nods, once, carefully lining up the shot and pulling the trigger. Over a thousand meters away, Loomis’s head explodes into a wet mass. Calmly and quickly, Nicky disassembles his rifle, packing it away while Joe clears out the last indicators of their presence here.

Joe presses a fierce kiss to his mouth. “Good shot.”

Nicky grins at him, eager to get the fuck out of here and back to the safehouse, back to something like normalcy. They’ve done longer campaigns, and really this one only took a few weeks, but something about how unfamiliar the methods are has made it seem so much slower.

He can see why a group of mortals would use Parker’s techniques— running cons is safer, and has a much higher potential for gain over a single lifespan— but he’s also just… not very good at not being Nicolo.

“This was the last one,” he sighs out. “Perhaps a shower and a couple days break while Andy and Parker argue about the next job.”

“We’re not far from the beach,” Joe points out, heading across the hayfield towards the trees that border it. “You, sunshine, a few days away…”

Nicky admits it sounds tempting, but at the same time— “It’s November, _caro mio_. In Poland. The beach is not that inviting.” There will be snow by morning, and while it’s not cold enough to cause problems yet, he has no interest in turning into an icicle for his husband’s amusement.

Joe huffs out his agreement. “We never did go back to Malta.”

“Soon,” Nicky promises, pulling open the car door where it waits for them beneath the trees. “Once we have Quynh.” He pauses, thinking about bringing up Booker, but decides not to. It’s too early, not even a year. And he is still angry and hurt that their brother could give them up like that.

But then he catches Andy looking into the distance, waiting for something that will never come, or Nile frowning at a reference Nicky has no idea how to even begin to explain and he wants his brother.

Andy and Parker are the last ones back to the safehouse, cheerfully trading techniques on how to best accomplish… something, Nicky missed what, but it sounds like it involves breaking into the British Museum.

“Job done?” Andy asks sharply. “Can we do what we need to do now?”

“Yes, boss,” Joe says, shrugging out of his jacket and looking towards the open bedroom. “After we get some sleep.”

Nile, stretched out on one of the beds, already looks like she’s asleep— apparently keeping up with Eliot is harder than she expected, but he’d snapped something about ninety minutes of sleep when she’d brought it up— and Nicky wants to join her. A shower and something hot to eat and then getting away from here.

Now that he’s warm, he wants to be safe before they collapse.

“We’re certain no one was followed?” Nicky asks, unable to stomp out the anxiety that’s been following him for months. It was easier on the Steppes, with no one around, but here in the city? Everyone could be looking for them.

Joe wraps an arm around his waist, encouraging him to relax. They’re professionals, there is nothing to worry about and yet… “Eat something, _nujumi_. You have been cold for too long.”

Eliot points absently towards the stove before picking up a knife and bending back over the whetstone. Parker beats them to it, appearing out of nowhere to skip gaily into the kitchen and scooping out a bowl of soup and a chunk of bread. She leans against the back of Eliot’s chair to eat, trusting him to watch her back.

Nicky forces himself to unfreeze, pushing Joe and Andy to sit at the table while he fixes bowls for all three of them— beef stew it looks like, probably started this morning before Eliot and Nile had left for their part of the job— and claims the fourth seat.

“We need more chairs,” he blurts out without thinking. “In all the safehouses.” Their individual homes may or may not need more— the house in Malta does not, but the one in Tunis probably does (it’s been so many years since they’ve been there… they’ve kept it, but a smaller world makes it harder and harder for them to visit their old places)— but for centuries, there have been four of them, so if there’s anyone else, they eat standing.

Seven of them, even if Booker’s missing for a while, but they’re going after Quynh next and Eliot and Parker may not stick around permanently… they need more chairs.

(Why is this the thing that’s caught his exhausted mind? He has no idea, but it’s something they can _solve—_ no fighting, no exiles, nothing needed but a trip to the market. He and Joe will bicker about price versus looks, come back with chairs that were the best available balance of cheap and not falling down under them, and then… the problem will be solved.)

Joe slides his bowl across the table, into Nicky’s space before moving. Pulling Nicky’s chair away from the table, he plops down on Nicky’s lap. “There, enough chairs for everyone who’s eating. After we get Quynh back, we’ll bring back some more.”

Nicky nods, head butting Joe’s shoulder before reaching for his bowl. He needs to eat and then sleep. Maybe that will be enough to get his brain to shut up about how unprepared they are for this radical expansion of their family.

Parker sulkily moves into the abandoned chair after Eliot elbows her, the two of them having a silent argument that mostly happens in facial expressions and annoyed frowns. Andy, who doesn’t care and would prefer to eat on top of a horse if possible, watches it all silently, taking stock of everything like she always does.

“Loomis’ entire operation has been dismantled, so we can move onto the Orlavs and getting Quynh back,” she says, almost daring someone to interrupt her. “Parker, Eliot? Either of you worked with the mobs lately?”

“Only dismantling their groups in the States,” Parker says. “The big families are too well organized for us to take down entirely.”

Eliot sighs, shrugs. “We try to keep away from the organized crime shit. Too many people, too many pies. It’s a trade off— we can help more people if we focus on corporations and the like.” From the look of it, it’s not a trade off either of them like, but it’s one they’ve made over and over again.

Nicky can’t fault them. There’s a reason they’ve not been dealing with them much either. “Faster and leaner isn’t always protection.”

“Right.” Andy sighs, looking down at the table. “Let’s get some rest, figure out how we’re going to do this in the morning.”

It doesn’t take very long to bed down— Joe carefully shifts Nile so she’s against the wall, leaving room for him and Nicky in front while Eliot and Andy have a whispered argument over who is taking the front on the other bed. Parker catches Nicky’s eye and smirks, starfishing over the bed while the other two play a furious round of paper-rock-scissors (Andy loses) and stash knives under pillows.

Nicky drifts off as Eliot makes a final check of the doors and windows, settling against Joe.

* * *

Quynh coldly stares at the man in front of her, waiting for him to stop screaming. It was just his Achilles tendon, no reason for him to scream this much. She has much worse injuries in mind if he doesn’t tell her who hired him.

“Again,” she says, deliberately soft. “The bombs you planted in the car came from someone. Who?”

“Loomis!” He shrieks when she reaches for the knife on the table next to her, her fingers running over the grip. “He supplied the weapons. The job came from someone else.”

“Is there a reason you’re protecting them?” She asks, genuinely curious. They’ve not been at this for very long and she’s already getting bored, but she needs the information.

She tried the computer like Booker had started to show her, but it required too many passwords and knowledge. She’ll learn it— she’ll force Booker to teach her when she gets him back— but for right now, she’s content to work her way up the food chain.

Criminals haven’t changed much in five hundred years after all, even if the ways they commit those crimes have.

“They’ll kill me if I rat them out,” he blubbers. She makes an impatient noise, waiting for him to get on with it. “If I’m lucky, they’ll only kill me instead of my entire family!”

Quynh spits on the floor, looming over the chair where she has him tied. “You’re going to die either way; you killed my brother.”

He starts sobbing again and Quynh rolls her eyes, leaning back against the table she’s dragged over. His sobs echo through the small storage locker, bouncing off the concrete floor and steel walls and crashing back together. She lets him cry himself out, idly picking at her nails with a knife until he’s barely hiccupping.

“I’m going to kill you,” she hisses finally. “Fast or slow, with your family or alone. I have died both ways, and it does not matter at all. Everyone dies alone, even in the arms of their lover.”

His eyes, swollen and red, widen slightly and perhaps she should have chosen her words with more care. But he is going to die before he has a chance to take that information anywhere. And he’s already borne witness to Booker’s resurrection.

“The Orlav family,” he finally whispers, more scared of her than he is of them. “There was a cut out, but it was them.”

Quynh nods silently, palming a small knife off the table. Now that he’s broken, the rest of this will be easier. “Where?”

“Trade was in Warsaw. I don’t know where they took him after that.” He starts crying again.

Shaking her head, she lashes out with the knife, burying it deep in his eye. She leaves it there for several long moments, watching as he twitches his way towards death. Then she cuts his throat, just to be sure.

It’s a matter of minutes to douse the body in oil along with her bloodstained clothes. She changes into a fresh outfit, glances around to make sure everything is taken care of, and flicks a lighted book of matches at the corpse before closing the door behind her.

This hasn’t changed either… although gasoline is a much more effective accelerant than they used in the witch trials. Glancing around to make sure no one is watching, she takes off for the bus station a few blocks away. She knows her next stop, now she just needs to get there.

* * *

He’s up before dawn, doing near silent pull-ups on the doorframe between the living area and the bathroom, hoping that the slow burn will at least give him some level of calm.

Instead, he’s just glaring at his computer rig from slightly different angles, like that will get him anywhere.

He’s been searching for days, trying to find any sign of Parker and Eliot or Booker and coming up dry both times. He needs to find something soon, or he’s going to start doing some very drastic things that no one wants him to do. They’ll certainly bring Sterling back down on him, possibly other agencies as well, eating up more time and resources from his actual job.

But at this point, he’s not sure what other option he has.

Dropping back to the ground, Alec pads back over to his rig and gets to work.

It only takes a few minutes to again locate the last job offer Booker interacted with (and Alec makes a note to get the marketplace to upgrade their security), tracking it to a minor gang southeast of Vienna. The Austrian government says the gang can’t pull off the sort of shit that would take Booker out, but they do have contact with other groups— mostly smuggling drugs and occasionally weapons— that could, possibly, maybe, grab Book. They’d only need to get lucky once before swooping in after all.

Leaving that pulled up, Alec breaks into the Interpol servers to double check the other groups. This is a well-worn path at this point, checking the wanted posters (and Sterling’s inbox) and a few other places where they would keep files on Leverage. And then he goes looking for anything that might actually help with what he’s doing.

He almost ignores the string of dead bodies leading across the eastern EU, but one of them has a few seconds of video footage attached to the report. A Vietnamese woman walks with a white man in a suit towards a shipping container before the footage is corrupted and cuts off.

Alec lets out a slow whistle and watches the video again. For someone who’d been drowning for centuries, Quynh sure as fuck has figured out how to get around. He deletes the video as a matter of course, downloading the case files and corrupting them on the server.

No one really needs to know about what she’s doing, not when she’s blazing a path for him to follow.

Checking the clock, he books a seat on the next flight to Warsaw and starts throwing things into a bag. He needs to get there. Everything that comes after… comes after.

* * *

“Let’s just storm the place,” Andy says again, leaning her head against the car window. “Even if Quynh isn’t there, it’ll be a lot easier than trying to get in and out without being seen.”

“And if she’s not there, every other facility they have will clam up tighter than a camel’s nose,” Eliot shoots back, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “We’ve got time to do this right, Andy.” He’s not sure if it’s the impending mortality or that it’s _Quynh_ that’s pushing her so hard, but she’s near frantic— not that Nile or Parker would be able to tell, but he can see the signs, can watch it in how Nico and Joe are reacting.

“El—“ she starts and he shakes his head.

“No. Not with you mortal.” Bad enough that he’s probably going to have to strap on a gun for this one, he refuses to do it the stupidest way possible. Andy huffs and goes silent, staring at the fields that surround the road.

Parker meets his eyes in the rear view mirror, a softening of her frown while she has her mastermind face on. She’s not going to be allowed to plan this one, he hopes she realizes that, but he’s watched her pick apart other people’s plans for years. She’s not going to stop just because Andy is unfathomably old.

Nile frowns in her sleep next to Parker, hands and legs twitching against the seatbelt she had clicked with a lifetime of habit. Another nightmare. He feels guilty hoping that it’s a vision of Quynh, but he’s not holding his breath. Sometimes Nile dreams of Quynh as she must be— hurting but no longer drowning— and sometimes it’s as Quynh was for so many years.

She says it’s not too bad, knowing that the dreams of drowning are just that, nightmares and someone else’s trauma, but Eliot isn’t sure its true. She buries them, refusing to talk about them unless Joe or Nicky goes prying, but he watches her in the mornings. Their newest sister is on the edge of a depression spiral, if he’s any judge.

Unfortunately, he has no idea what to do about that.

The SUV lapses into silence, the road noise filling the cabin as he follows the winding highway for mile after mile, towards where they think Quynh is being held.

They really need a hacker. Parker and Nile, between them, are pretty good, but they don’t have the skill set nor the damn near magic touch that a proper hacker does, gliding into protected systems with ease and just… making them dance.

He just doesn’t know how much of that is ‘they need a hacker’ and how much of it is he misses Alec something fierce, far more than he ever thought he would. And getting worse as time passes— he’s not dead, Alec isn’t dead, it would only take a phone call, but somehow… he can never convince himself that it won’t end with Alec hating him, hating _Parker_ , the same way Booker’s son did, and for much the same reasons.

Parker’s been thinking about it too, he’s pretty sure, a few barely diverted starts ending someplace weird because Parker.

When all this is done, when they have Quynh back, he’s taking Parker and they’re going someplace warm, sunny, and with lots of tall buildings— Hong Kong maybe?— so they can figure out who they are when it’s just the two of them.

“This place is a legitimate medical facility, yes?” Nicky calls after a few kilometers, accent thick with sleep. “We send inspectors in, see if Quynh is there. Once we know that—“

Andy scowls, but doesn’t say anything, which is as good as an admission that she doesn’t know what else to do. Eliot’s not that fond of the plan either, but they’ve been trying to find a compromise between frontal assault and not at all and this is the one they keep coming back to.

“Fine,” Andy huffs, throwing up her hands. “We’ll do it that way. But someone else is figuring out how to get in.”

Eliot nods before turning his attention back to the road. They’ll need gas soon, and to start working this plan into something usable. Taking a deep breath, he smoothly changes lanes just before the border crossing. Might as well take care of at least some of that soon while they wait for a better time to cross.

Andy pulls him aside as soon as they stop, away from the others to the back of the gas station. “Out with it,” she demands. “You’ve always liked projectiles, you wouldn’t give that up for no reason. And if we’re going with the stupid plan instead of the one that plays to our strengths, I need to know why. I let it slide because it wasn’t important, but now it is.”

“Damnit, Andy.” Sighing, Eliot scrubs a hand down his face. This has been coming since London, he just thought that maybe she wouldn’t want to know, maybe she’d accept it at face value and let it go. He shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up.

“After y’all left Vietnam,” he starts, avoiding looking at her. They’re far enough north that winter is nearly here— the trees barren and clouds heavy with rain or snow— and it almost feels like coming home. “I stuck around, falling deeper and deeper into the worst parts of the shit. By the time I left, I’m not sure who was committing more atrocities, me or the Americans.

“I didn’t care anymore,” he whispers. “The last time I hadn’t been in a war zone was, fuck, I don’t know. I think there was a six month span in the 1880s? Everyone around me committed crimes every day, what was one more? I started helping move weapons, and then…” Eliot shrugs, looking up with bleak eyes. “Eventually, I ended up as Moreau’s attack dog.”

Andy hisses out a breath, she can see where this is going then. Good. “I thought some of his enemies died like you would have done it.”

“Yeah, well…”

“That’s not what you’ve been hiding. And nothing that you’ve not done before.”

“We never toppled a small country for the sake of one man though.”

“You’re stalling. I’m not Nile, El. You’re not going to offend me.”

He can and will, and holy shit he does _not_ want to have this conversation. Not when his world is feeling precarious enough, he can’t lose this family too. “Kids.” Rip the band-aid off, make it quick, so she can cut out the cancerous growth at the edges. “I killed _kids_ , Andromache. Shot them all in front of their parents and then shot their parents. Because they were civil servants and unneeded.”

She’s silent and Eliot nods. “You wanted to know. Worst thing I ever did. And the reason I will never use a gun again.” Taking a deep breath, he pushes off the wall and shrugs deeper into his jacket, starting to head towards the far side of the petrol station. Andy can excise the cancer from growing into her family— she’s always been good at triage, at making the emotionless choice— and he will go without argument.

He’s known for years that any kindness or love shown to him is conditional on not knowing the truth. They’ve been apart for decades, any love left will be easily forgotten.

The broken asphalt crunches behind him, and he braces himself; for words or for the physical punch, he’s not sure, but he knows its coming.

“Oh, El,” Andy breathes out, barely audible over the cars on the road, idling trucks and busses. She’s on him in three steps, sliding her hand up his arm to spin him around, cupping the back of his neck. “You’re still in this with me. You’re not the man who did that anymore than I’m the woman who wiped out a village.”

“It was barely twenty years ago—“

“Want me to go get Nicky? He can do the confessor thing, get his god to forgive you. You can’t bring people back, and since Moreau went silent ten-fifteen years ago, I’m guessing your team solved at least part of the problem.”

Swallowing, he meets her eyes. “You’re sure?”

Andy huffs, dropping her hand and playfully shoving him towards the front of the building. “Get in the car, asshole. Figure out how we’re going to play this.”

* * *

The alert flashes across his screen and Alec is in motion almost before he’s actually comprehended what the alert says. Passports with Eliot and Parker’s faces scanned at the border between Poland and Belarus. He can work with that.

Taking a deep breath, he pulls the car’s make, model and license plate, books a flight into Minsk, and starts working out how on earth he’s going to contact them. Minor worry, he can take care of it when he’s there. Because if they’re in Belarus, they’re going after Booker and he knows where they’ll end up.

Alec throws his gear into a bag, abandoning the hotel where he’d set up shop a week ago without a second thought. He can erase himself just as easily from the air as he can actually in the room and time is of the essence.

He’s not sure he actually breathes again until he lands. He must look like a maniac, but no one in a uniform gives him a second glance, or worse, pulls him aside, so he takes the win.

Forcing himself to calm down— going through a Jedi meditation thing he picked up years ago— Alec heads towards the oldest part of the city, hoping that luck, for once, will be on his side. Because he has no idea how to find them now that they’re here. There just aren’t that many traffic cameras for him to use.

He wanders a few blocks, pickpocketing a few people to exchange his currency, before finding a café with a good view of the street. He scarfs down a sandwich, barely pausing long enough to notice what it is, and lingers over a cup of coffee, watching the street, trying to breath in some of the old city vibe.

He’s not Sophie, he can’t just turn personalities and accents off and on, but this he can do.

Alec sits for a long time, occasionally pulling out his tablet to check a few other things he is monitoring, but mostly hoping that if he’s patient enough, he’ll get lucky.

A young black woman slides into the chair across from him, hands cradling a cup of tea as she looks him over. She looks familiar, like he knows her from sometime long ago.

“So you are real,” she says flatly, in broad Chicago flavored English. “I thought I was nuts.”

“... Nile?” Alec manages, glancing around to double check that they aren’t being watched. Two black folk in the entire city, it’s a miracle no one is calling the cops probably. “How did you find me?”

“”You’ve been searching for us for weeks, it’s not hard to figure out that you want something.” She bites her lip, eyes going up and across the street, like there’s someone over there watching over her. There probably is— Booker had said something about his team having a sniper.

“I just…” he trails off, unsure how to even start. “I need to know that El and P are okay, even if they want nothing to do with me any more.” And that hurts to admit, that maybe they took off because they were tired of him, but he forces himself through it.

Nile snorts. “You’re something else. All noble sacrifices and bullshit. No one spends a month searching as hard as you do for something they’re willing to give up.”

Alec shrugs. “You stay alive long enough, you learn when to let someone cut their losses. And when to cut your own.”

“Fear leads to hate and the Dark Side,” Nile mutters before taking a sip of her tea.

“So you’re really new,” Alec says suddenly. “It’s not just me dreaming of being in the army again, or missing Parker and Eliot.”

She stares at him, a vaguely disappointed look on her face. “Parker said you were the smartest guy she knew.”

“Then next time they should take me with them when going to meet up with their immortal besties!”

“They don’t know,” Nile says slowly. “You never told them.”

“Because that convo would have gone great. ‘Hey guys, I think I can get us a seniors discount on mediocre pancakes and hash browns because I was born in 1921.’”

She laughs, relaxing slightly. “Pretty sure Eliot’s got you beat. The way he, Nicky, and Joe are palling around, they’ve spent a long time together. Not sure about Parker— Joe said something about the Alps in the fourteenth century? So you’re still the youngest.”

He shrugs. “They don’t know about me. And they never told me about themselves either. Parker just… never got hurt and El… healed super quick.” Pausing, he looks down at his own hands, the panic that enveloped him every time he sliced himself open while working on his gadgets and computers, worrying more that someone will see than getting blood on components. “I guess I did the same thing.”

Finishing her tea, Nile sets the cup down with a thunk. “Right, ready to go? You can help finish up the planning stages of this next mission.”

“Age of the geek. I can get you in, out, all around.”

“Good, because I don’t think Andy’s got the patience to do this more than once.”

Alec nods, ignoring the fact that he doesn’t really know what that means, and gets up to follow her.

* * *

Nile is beginning to wonder if this whole immortality thing comes with a side of soulmate. Because it hasn’t escaped her notice that out of all of them, only she and Book haven’t paired off, even if Quynh spent centuries at the bottom of the ocean and Lykon died. She can’t really say she’s looking forward to finding someone she’s going to spend centuries devoted to— emotions are fine, sex… ehhhh— but she’s also only twenty-seven. Maybe by the time she’s got a few decades or centuries under her belt, she’ll feel differently.

At any rate, she pushes Alec into the apartment ahead of her just so she can watch Parker’s face when she realizes who just walked in. It’s all the elated joy Nile was hoping for, in half a dozen words— more verbal touchstones than conversations— before Parker is crossing the living room and flinging her arms around him. Eliot is a quieter shadow, watching them for several heartbeats before wrapping his arms around them both and burying his face into their shoulders.

Jerking her gaze away, Nile heads towards the kitchen where the others are sitting around the table. Nicky’s rifle is tucked under the table between him and Joe, both of them grinning like lunatics.

“Find him?” Andy asks unnecessarily.

“Yeah, I did.” Something falls to the ground in the other room and Nile winces. “Hopefully they’ll remember that we’ve got a mission to plan.”

“He’s their computer guy?” Andy double checks, ignoring the ruckus. “He can monitor their communications or whatever.”

“Boss, he can do a lot more than that,” Joe points out. “Sounds like he can blow Book out of the water.”

Andy doesn’t look convinced, but Nile’s figured out that Andy’s relationship with computers is pretty much non-existent. She can do the basics, but anything beyond watching a YouTube video or checking a map is beyond what she can do. (Booker had found their paying jobs too, and eventually Nile is going to have to break his exile just to learn how he did that. Their lifestyle isn’t cheap and she needs to know there’s a positive cash flow for her own peace of mind.)

Standing, Joe pushes Nile into his seat and starts to make coffee. “Give them a few minutes.”

The last of the water gurgles through the grounds and Eliot tugs Parker and Alec into the kitchen. They rearrange the seating a bit— Andy still gets her own chair, Parker shrugs and sits on the table itself, Nicky and Joe have one of their silent conversations before Nicky settles on Joe’s lap, Alec claims a chair, and Nile takes the last one while Eliot leans against the wall. Or at least he starts out there, but eventually he weaves his way between Parker and Alec (like a cat, Nile thinks, but very carefully says absolutely nothing about.) leaving himself open in case they’re attacked, but still relaxed.

“Nile said y’all have a job?” Alec says, looking around the table. “Please tell me its getting Sebastien away from the Orlavs.”

“What are you talking about?” Andy demands, slamming her chair back down onto all four legs. “He’s in Paris, probably drunk.” She’s still angry then, great.

Nile gets it, really, but at some point, keeping their secret is more important than Booker’s damn exile.

“Naw, he’s been…” Alec stops, looking around. “Oh shit, you don’t know.” He turns to Nile. “How the fuck did you not tell them?”

“That Quynh’s out of the ocean? I did. And then when she moved. All she dreams about is fucking drowning.” Nile breathes. “It’s endless, even when there’s flashes of other things— a cell, maybe an apartment, maybe a nice jail cell— she’s still drowning, bottomless anger and incipient insanity.”

“Yeah, she definitely needs therapy,” Alec agrees. “But she’s been killing her way up the food chain to figure out where they took Sebastien.”

“Great!” Joe throws his hands in the air, narrowly missing Nicky. “He can rot there for a few months while we take a vacation. I’m thinking Southern Hemisphere, heading into summer.”

“Joe.” It’s only a single word, but Joe snaps his mouth shut. His face is still angry, but he’s listening.

“More to the point,” Eliot points out reasonably, “if Quynh is going after him too, we’ll be able to bring them both home.”

Nile’s not sure that’s a good incentive, but she’s figured out that anything she has to say about Booker is automatically discounted, so she might as well save her breath.

Unbidden, a conversation she had with Eliot months ago comes to mind: none of them should be alone. Looking around the table, she sees it now the way that she didn’t see it then: they all lean into each other, even when they don’t look like it. The way they still look for Booker isn’t habit or because she’s not good enough. He should be there because they’re meant to be together.

Okay. Time for bullshit is officially over, and if they’re too stupid to recognize that, she’ll force them to. “Alec, do you know which facility?”

He straightens up, looking pleased. “Southwest of here, some small town that’s barely on the map. Officially, they grow bioplast implants. Which I guess is true enough.” He wrinkles his nose and grimaces. “The implants bit at least.”

“Inspectors then,” Nicky says firmly. “To get the layout of the building, and whatever else we need.”

“They’re not going to walk inspectors past their illegal organ harvesting operation.” Andy looks thoughtful for a moment. “But the areas they avoid will tell us something too.”

“Absolutely.” Nile looks around the table again. Joe still looks pissy, Parker bored; Eliot and Nicky look like they’re already running the odds, trying to figure out the best way past all this. They’re the pragmatic ones, doing what it takes to protect the others. “Next question: Who’s going in?”

They hash out the teams over the next forty-five minutes, inspectors, backup, and overwatch. Having a solid goal helps, knowing who can take which jobs most comfortably while still deferring to the others as they point out flaws and potential problems.

This isn’t how the team has traditionally worked, Nile thinks, but Andy is taking a step back and letting them work it out. Better to start the process now than in a few decades after she’s gone.

A hand clenches around her heart, nearly stops her breathing, at the thought. That one day, Andy won’t be here to lead at all. Fuck. Joe, who must have mind reading powers, reaches over, touching her elbow and dragging her back to the present, not the future. Worry about Andy’s mortality later, when they don’t have a mission hanging over their heads.

It’s settled, eventually, and they split up. Joe and Nicky leave to pick something up for dinner, Parker, Eliot, and Alec disappear into one of the bedrooms. Which leaves just her and Andy.

“How you doing kid?”

“You really mean for me to lead them one day?” Nile blurts out. “How is that going to work? They all have centuries more experience—“

“Nile.” Andy twists her foot into the bars of Nile’s chair and drags her closer. “I do. You’ll be ready by the time you go in first.” She shrugs, looks towards the other rooms, listening to the faint murmurs of the trio behind closed doors. “More importantly, _you’ll_ know you’re ready. I’m not planning on going anywhere just yet.”

“Except maybe Brazil,” Nile points out with a grin. “Get Quynh nice and warm.”

“I was thinking Australia or New Zealand, actually. Less violence.”

“Andy… you love violence.” Nile stares at her, wondering when exactly Andy lost track of herself. “Horses and a good fight. That’s your _thing_.”

Andy chuckles, wrapping her hands around a long cold cup of coffee. “But they’re not Quynh’s thing.”

“Ah.” Nile shrugs, aware that she’s just let herself be distracted, but deciding to let it happen. “Plenty of bar fights I guess. Almost the same thing.”

“Exactly.” She stretches back across her chair before slumping forward. “The guys will help you figure it out. You’re already good for the team, Nile. Don’t ever doubt that.”

It sounds suspiciously more like goodbye than Nile thinks Andy is aiming for, but she lets it go. Bringing it up will just make everything more awkward.

Andy pushes away from the table anyway, ducking into the living room and bringing back an armful of weapons and whetstones. “Help me with these. First step in using a bladed weapon is taking care of one.”

Nile nods, reaching for a few of the smaller knives and going to work. This she knows how to do. She can work up to the axes and swords.

* * *

The facility is near the center of town, a repurposed office building from the Soviet era (Quynh’s not entirely certain of everything that means, but her dreams and visions through Sebastien’s eyes taught her enough to know it was not an enjoyable period— which matches the architecture, heavy brutal lines, nailing the buildings to the earth). She circles it several times, picking it apart the same way she used to pick apart enemy fortifications with Andromache.

She marks the entrances and the number of workers, the cars that arrive and leave again versus the cars that only leave with the majority of the workers (and the number of two-wheeled contraptions that outnumber them). Eventually, she has all the information she can gather without finding a way inside.

Quynh is on her third day of watching, bundled against the growing chill on top of a neighboring building when an unfamiliar car, nicer than the ones she’s used to seeing, pulls up to the main entrance and disgorges two people before driving away.

Something about them feels familiar. The taller one, a woman, straightens her jacket while the man does something with his tie, and somehow Quynh knows them. Knows that it is Andromache and Elijah, walking into the building for some reason.

She’s trying to decide if she should see if she can follow the car— surely it must have more information— or if she should wait until they leave and follow them then. If they know where Sebastien is, surely they are going to rescue him. But with only the two of them?

“Hey,” a woman says, just a few feet away from Quynh. “Quynh, right?” She asks in rudimentary Vietnamese. Her accent is terrible, and the words are thick in her mouth, but it’s understandable.

“Yes. Who are you?”

The blonde waves her hand, unimportant. “Andy and Eliot are figuring out where Booker is. So don’t do anything.”

“That building. What other information do they need?” Quynh hisses in frustration. She didn’t want to go in during the day, but if they’re just counting, they’re wasting a perfectly good opportunity. “They can kill everyone in there in minutes, why wait?”

“To avoid—“ the woman looks at her, frowning, and abruptly switches languages to the French-tinged German of the southern Alps. “Ja? Killing everyone will draw attention we cannot afford. Better to only kill those taking from Booker. We do not need more enemies.”

Quynh would happily murder everyone in that building, including Andromache and Elijah, for daring to hurt her brother, but this woman appears to have a better grasp of the situation.

“You are one of us then? How did I not dream of you?”

She shrugs, shifting to lean against the edge, her legs curled under her. “Nicky, Joe, and Eliot think you did, but it was centuries ago.”

“And we did not recognize you?”

She shrugs again. “I don’t remember. I…” she trails off, fingers knotting together, like she wants something to fidget with. “It was long ago,” she says finally.

Quynh nods, easily accepting what the woman doesn’t want to talk about. She suspects she’ll receive more answers eventually. And she has, she thinks, seen visions of the blonde in her dreams. Accompanied by the black man— Alec. They must know each other, and she certainly knows the others.

“We’re leaving Sebastien in there?” Quynh finally demands. “Or is there another plan? I’m aware that rescuing the lost is no longer a priority—“

“Because they didn’t kill themselves permanently to rescue you?” She sniffs, peering over the ledge. “From what Alec has been able to dig out of JRP’s records, you were over two thousand meters down. The technology to reach you has only been around for a few decades and the ocean is very big, even after all this time.”

They’re silent for several long minutes, Quynh trying to wrap her head around the assertion that she wasn’t abandoned, she was _lost_ , in every sense of the word.

“We’re at a safehouse in the city,” the woman says finally. “You can come with us, so we can include you.”

Quynh pauses, looks at her carefully. There’s no guile in her eyes, nothing to indicate that all is not well. Hesitantly she nods.

The tiny glass and metal phone is in her hands immediately, thumbs flying over the keypad to send a message of some sort.

Quynh tilts her head to see the screen which is obediently turned towards her. “Set an extra place for dinner? Little bird wants to come home.”

“I am not a bird.”

“Little viper is a different thing.” She shrugs dismissively before switching back to Vietnamese. “My name is Parker.”

Quynh nods, settling back onto her knees next to her and watching the building. They might be here for a long time and she might as well finish the job she was doing.

* * *

The messenger scurries in, for once without his constant list of part requests, interrupting the doctor before even the first cut is made. A late start today, Sebastien thinks. It feels later, anyway.

He wonders if that means that the orders are slowing down, if they’ll leave him alone for a few days.

Except even then, the doctor has come in to do his slice and dice routine. Sebastien has almost decided that’s what today is when the messenger comes in. They hold a hurried whispered conversation that Booker doesn’t understand and the doctor drops his scalpel on the tray with a sigh. “Hopefully this won’t take very long,” he snaps. “Why are we paying Sergei if he does not prevent surprise inspections?”

One of the guards steps pulls the door open as a cadre of suits pauses in the outside room.

Sebastien must be drugged, he could swear he sees Andy out there, in a pantsuit he’s never seen before and wielding a clipboard of all things. He cranes his head to get a second look, but the door closes and he’s cut off from the rest of the building again.

It couldn’t have been her anyway. The team said one hundred years, there’s no way they would relent after only a few months. (Quynh, maybe, but he doesn’t really think she would come after him either. She’s more likely to go find a mercenary army of her own to join with a long shot of hunting down the team.)

Huffing, he goes back to the woman who looked like Andy. Genetic lottery, it must be. Distance, slight insanity, the delirious need to see someone from his family… it can’t be her. If nothing else, she has never once in her entirely too long life gone undercover to get one of them back from their own stupidity.

Strangling the hope that’s trying to bud in his chest, he breathes deeply and forces himself to just accept being without pain for however long it lasts. It’s something he can… not rejoice in, but contentment might be possible. Relief for sure.

He shifts, watching how the guards ignore him. They’re bored of this duty, over a month of watching the doc carve into him without an incident. They won’t benefit from this organ stealing operation anyway— regardless of how much the bosses are selling them for, he’s certain that it’s outside the price range of the basic grunts.

Booker is already little more than a piece of furniture that bleeds and occasionally screams in their minds. Eventually, he’s sure, that will be useful, dulling their response times when they make a mistake and he does get free, but he’s a long way from that.

Hours pass, surprisingly boring in their mundanity without pain and death to punctuate them.

The guards start talking eventually, over his head in rapid fire in a dialect of Russian he doesn’t know. He thinks they’re talking about the football game, Sochi against… someplace. They don’t acknowledge Sebastien at all, but they’re significantly less professional when the doc isn’t in the room.

And then they file out, replaced with the single in-room guard for the overnight, locked in here with him. The heavy thunk of the lock shooting home doesn’t bring with it the normal reassurance though.

If it was Andy. If they somehow figured out he was being tortured, bits of him being mined out like silver and sold across the world. If Nile’s kindness outweighed Nicky’s slow burning anger. If, if, if.

If he gets to go home.

* * *

At its heart, this town is still a farming town. Most of the people either work in Minsk, a few dozen kilometers away, or on the farms that surround them. Thirty years ago, there was still an economy, but now… the medical facility is the largest employer in town, and most of its people were moved here by the crime families to support their work.

At two AM, it gives them their choice of empty buildings to stage out of. The shopping center across from their target hasn’t been opened in months— possibly years— and as long as they’re careful, shouldn’t pose any problems with them getting away clean. They won’t be here for very much longer after all, maybe another fifteen minutes, before they’re gone.

Eliot runs through the placement of all his weapons again, touching each scabbard and sheath in a ritual he’s been doing for centuries. For a couple of centuries, the check included a gun, but, as he makes sure the sword he’s borrowing from Nicky moves easily, this feels cleaner.

(He won’t feel that way in two hours, when he’s covered in blood and won’t see a shower for another three, but he’s taking what he can get right now.)

He catches Nile’s eye as she checks her new semi-automatic and then starts her own weapon check. She looks worried, caught up in the what-ifs and her own brain to get back to calm.

She’s just so fucking young.

Just as he’s opening his mouth to say something, Andy wanders over, tugging on a strap for the vest they’ve forced over her head. Nile stares at her for a second before pushing her gun into Joe’s hands and tsking. “How many times, Andy?” Nerves forgotten, she jerks the vest straight, pulling some straps tight and others looser, forcing it to conform to Andy’s body instead of the other way around.

Andy winks at Eliot over Nile’s head and he nods. Turning around, he checks in with Parker. “You got this, sweetheart?”

She nods, tensely. “Heavy,” she forces out, dancing her fingers across the shotgun and pistols she has on her bag and belt. They’re mostly for Booker, but if she needs them, they’re there. “Never liked this sort of plan.”

They share a look, both of them well aware that given three more days they could have found a way to do this without all the killing. Quynh and Andy weren’t willing to wait though, so here they are. Full frontal assault after all.

Quynh is the only other member of their team without any guns. She’d shrugged when offered her choice and picked up a sword and modern crossbow. “These were my weapons long before anyone thought of putting fireworks to such destructive uses.” And they had all accepted that and moved on.

“Ready,” Andy announces, meeting everyone’s eyes one final time.

Nicky taps his comm twice, echoing across the team’s earpieces. Eliot takes a deep breath and blows it out, reaching behind him blindly. Parker taps the back of his hand twice, message sent and received.

“May the Force be with you,” Hardison murmurs in their ears, his voice warm and low. He’s set up in a van a few blocks away, outside of the worst of the danger. He’s in no worse position as he normally is when they’re running a job… this one just has a lot more death and dying involved than the normal taking down of evil CEOs.

Andy pops the door and then they’re out, crossing the street at a run. Nile slaps a small C-4 charge on the door and silently waves everyone back. The near silent whomp destroys the lock and latch.

Andy and Joe are the first ones in, weapons held at the ready. Quickly, they fan out, separating by pairs to their assigned targets. Andy and Quynh slink towards the guard station at the center of the building so they can unleash havoc. Joe and Nile head towards the elevator and the top floor to get any financials they can get their hands on. And Eliot and Parker head for the stairs and their actual target.

Between floors three and four, the alarm comes on, screaming in the red tinged darkness of the stairwell. Eliot lets out a low curse and starts pushing even faster.

“You good?” He grunts at Parker as they reach the fifth floor and their goal.

“Yes,” she says shortly, fingers already dancing over the lock. It pops open a few seconds later and she jimmies it so it doesn’t latch behind them.

“This way.” He keeps a knife in his hand, ready to lash out if they encounter anyone. It should just be security, but some people are always working late, trying to figure out the next thing to get the bosses to notice them.

He guides them through the dark maze of labs and manufacturing clean rooms. Next to him, Parker shivers, her breath condensing into a cloud in front of her. It’s cold up here, the retro-fitted HVAC turned down to frigid, despite the temperatures outside.

“Hate working cold,” Parker murmurs, clearer in his earbud than his actual ears. “It’s easier when all I have to do is pick some asshole’s pocket.”

“You didn’t pick his pocket, you dropped a phone in,” Eliot points out, equally quiet. “While he was holding you hostage.”

She shrugs, not quite skipping her way to the last lab on the floor. Any guards behind the door are going to be alert given the alarm, but hopefully they got up here fast enough for him to still be looking for information.

The lock on the door has been reversed, so it’s locking the lab closed from the outside— no one inside is getting out without a lot of trouble. Eliot almost hopes that at some point Booker got loose and made them realize what it means to be locked inside a room with an undying warrior, but if that had happened, there’s no sign of it out here.

Breathing in, Eliot shoves the knife back into its sheath and pulls out his sword. Parker eases the lock back without a sound.

The alarm goes finally silent. “Alarms killed. Sorry about how long that took— was more interested in keeping the signal from getting to the cops.” Alec pauses, and then continues, much more assured. “Joe, Nile, you’re on the money. Stick the drive into any computer and let me do my thing.”

Andy grunts over the earbuds, then laughs with a sort of wild glee that Eliot hasn’t heard in _years_. He might hear the quiet huff of Nicky’s laughter in her wake, but he’s not sure and he isn’t worried about figuring it out at the moment either.

“We’re grabbing Book now. Probably coming out hot.” Eliot nods at Parker and drops into a half crouch.

She pops the door open and he’s through it like a shot.

The sole guard— down from at least three during the day— shoots wildly as Eliot crashes through the door. Three of the shots find their marks, lodging in Eliot’s torso, but he ignores the bursts of pain. He’s dealt with worse.

The quarters are too tight for the sword to be of any real use, so he drops it, stepping around an IV stand. The guard punches him, his full weight behind the fist that buries itself in Eliot’s gut.

Dropping to one knee, Eliot catches the next punch, grabbing the fist and yanking the guard off balance. He flips the guard over his shoulder, dropping him onto the guard’s back. Driving a punch into the guard’s temple, Eliot waits for a moment to see if he’s getting back up before pushing himself to his feet.

“Elijah?” Booker asks, half-astounded. Parker leans over him, undoing the last cuff. “What are you— Just leave me here. I can’t go back.”

“Bullshit,” Parker snaps. “Whatever you think staying here is going to do? It won’t. On your feet.”

Booker stares at her. “Do I know you?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Eliot grabs the sword off the floor and looks around. “They have anything of yours? Blood, tissue?”

Booker laughs harshly. “Everything and more. Walking organ factory.” He waves a hand at himself. “They’ve not taken anything in the last couple of days though.”

So any harvesting they’ve done is probably already off-site except for what’s in this room. “Parker—“

“Burn it?” She asks hopefully.

“The entire floor, mama,” Alec says. “The lead doc is a sick fuck, pretty sure he’s got samples squirreled away in other labs.”

Parker nods, looking around the lab curiously before she starts reaching for chemicals. “Give me five. And kill the sprinklers.”

Eliot doesn’t want to know what she’s planning. Snagging the pistol out of her waistband, he hands it to Booker. “Let’s go. You good to move?”

Booker jerks his head into a nod. “If my other option is burning to death—“ He takes the gun, pulls the slide back to check that it’s loaded and nods more firmly. “I’m good.” He looks at the guard, still unconscious on the floor. Calmly, he raises the pistol and shoots him in the head.

“All downstairs shooters are down,” Andy announces over the earbuds. “I don’t know the status of anyone not in the security office.”

“And I’ve got a backdoor into their system. Let’s move people, I want to eat breakfast someplace not under a dictatorship.”

“On our way,” Joe says, sounding like they’re running.

Parker sparks two wires together— where they’d come from, Eliot doesn’t ask— and watches as a roll of paper towels sitting in a tray filled with some sort of gel goes up in flame. “That should do it. Alec, we’re taking the stairs.”

It’s a rush to get down to the ground floor, nearly sprinting down the stairs as the fire grows hungrily. They can hear it lapping at their heels, growing in the sudden influx of air.

Nicky throws open the door to the van as they hit the exit, tugging Booker after them and tumbling inside. “Go,” he shouts, and Alec hits the gas, jerking them all into motion before Joe and Eliot have the doors closed.

“Status?” Andy demands. “Everyone alright?”

Various forms of “here” and “okay” echo around the small space. Andy lets out a deep breath at the last response and sags against Quynh’s shoulder in the front corner.

Eliot does his own head count, checking that no one is trying to hide injuries that aren’t healing or anything else. Finally satisfied, he settles against the side wall to doze.

Twenty minutes, if Alec keeps to their normal routine after a job gone bad, and then they’ll split up, meeting at their next safehouse in thirty-six hours. (Sometimes longer, almost never less; depending on how many borders they have to cross and the number of cops on their tails.)

* * *

“Lisbon,” Andy dictates when they stop to split up. “You too, Book.” She grimaces and dry swallows the pills Nile hands her— painkillers, Sebastien assumes; still mortal then— “Nile, you’re with Nicky and Joe. Book, your choice.”

Traveling with Elijah and Alec would draw too much attention to them, since the girl— Parker, he thinks he heard someone call her, but she sure as fuck hadn’t bothered to introduce herself— is already going to stand out.

Sebastien nods, defeated. “With you, boss.”

Quynh smiles at him so briefly he might be imagining it and Andy tilts her head. Not the reaction he would have expected, but what does he know. He fully expected to be left standing in an airport or train station with enough cash to get himself lost.

(He’s lost track of days, while having his organs harvested like happy meals, but he’s pretty sure he’s got over ninety-nine years left. He’ll redo the math eventually, so he has something to count down. Unless they make him start over.

He _really_ hopes they don’t make him start over. Would rather they had just left him there if they’re going to make him start over.)

Alec looks at him, searching for something Sebastien is certain he’ll never find, before pulling his phone out of his pocket and starting to type madly on it. He really is a marvel, much better at the computer things than Sebastien has ever been. Just another duty that will be taken away from him forever. “There’s a west bound train in about an hour— freight, but that shouldn’t be a problem?”

Sebastien nods, shouldering one of the lean packs they brought with them and starting towards the rail yards. He walks alone, even once Andy and Quynh catch up with him, they stay a few meters away, talking quietly in some language he doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t need to understand it. He just needs to follow orders, escort them to the safehouse, and then find passage to… somewhere. South America maybe, he can blend in there well enough. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve used an entire continent to get the fuck away from each other.

The freight train rolls through less than an hour later, loading up with the last of the harvest before being sent westward. It won’t move fast, but they’re more concerned with security than speed, so no great loss. Alec and Elijah will probably get to the safehouse first, then Joe, Nicky, and Nile. They’ll settle in, open it up and make it a home. And when Sebastien follows Andy and Quynh in, like an abandoned puppy, he’ll accept whatever they offer him.

He fucked up, but…

Well, he’s already accepted his punishment once. He’ll accept it again. Not like he has a choice.

Settling into the corner of the freight car, he perches on top of a sack of potatoes, his gun across his lap. He can stay here.

* * *

“That gonna be a problem?” Nile asks quietly, staring at Booker’s dejected back. She’d hoped that six months of exile would have softened everyone, convinced them that they should fold Booker back in— isolation does nothing for depression— but it doesn’t look like it has.

“He won’t hurt Andy, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Nicky says. “Probably not Quynh either.”

“Considering he rescued her from the other pharmaceutical company and has been protecting her for the last few months while she gets her feet under her? Quynh’s fine. You three assholes—“

“Alec. Not right now,” Parker snaps, and oh, Nile can see why she’s the leader in their little triad. They work differently than the team, but its the same devotion and faith. “How are we traveling?”

Alec shrugs. “Preferences?”

“I hate flying,” Nile offers into the waiting silence. “I’ll do it if I have to, but… train? Or car?”

“I got you. Lets get some place civilized and I’ll make the magic happen.”

“So we only stopped here…” Eliot starts.

“Trading cars— there’s a car park a few kilometers away— and to get a bead on everyone’s wants.”

“First time you’ve done that,” Eliot snarks playfully, relaxing a bit.

“You didn’t tell me that São Paulo had a price on your head!”

Nile grins, looking between the two of them and then back at Joe and Nicky. It’s a well worn argument, and the echo of one Joe and Nicky had a few days ago about the name of a spice merchant who cheated them out of three weeks pay a few centuries ago. It reminds her of her parents, playfully bickering about something that happened back in high school, worn so smooth by time and repetition and love that it holds no barbs anymore.

“Guys,” she asks. “How do you want to go?” Despite Andy’s orders, she’s a big girl and can travel by herself if they want to fly. Or suck it up and fly with them— passenger planes are a different beast than military or fucking drug runners.

Nicky looks at Joe, one of those silent conversations, and nods. “The train is fine. We are not in a hurry.”

Parker nods, separating Alec and Eliot and pointing back to the car. “Let’s go. You wanted breakfast not under a dictator? That means we need to get out of here.”

They steal two cars at the car park, splitting up into their respective trios. Alec hands Joe a phone, their IDs, and a few hundred Euros and then waves as he climbs into the small sedan while Parker bounces behind the wheel.

“These look real,” Nile says blankly, staring down at her own face. The cover on the passport isn’t what she’s used to, but… “How the hell did he manage this?”

“The better question is _when_ did he manage this? I suspect he’s been working on these since he knew about our existence.” Joe frowns and looks after the car. “I have many questions.”

Nile nods for lack of anything else to do and looks around. “So who wants to teach me how to hotwire a car?”

Nicky laughs quietly and jerks his head towards another small sedan. It looks like every other car in here, so she guesses this is the local equivalent of a Honda Civic. “Older cars are easier. They don’t have all the computers.”

He walks her through it, step by step, even though they’re in a hurry, using the same patience he had while starting to teach her how to use a sword. It’s ugly and she’s sure he could have done it in a third the time, but eventually, they climb in and start for the major train station.

* * *

Her boys argue the entire way to the airport. Not the fun arguments, but the mean ones, where they’re being assholes to each other on purpose. She isn’t sure if she’s mad at them or not. She doesn’t think she is— it feels right that she’s never going to be alone— but emotions are hard sometimes.

Snagging one of the backpacks after they abandon the car, she skips through the airport, carefully filling it with clothes and a couple novels lifted from the shops until it looks like the bag of a light packer who flew to a whole new country for a long weekend. Luggage is important— security looks more for that than for people acting suspicious. In an age of nervous and exhausted flyers, who can tell if the shifty looking guy is tired or plotting?

Eliot and Alec are doing the same thing, slower, so she abandons them to pick up some hot drinks. They’ve driven all the way into Poland, so by now, breakfast is a reasonable thing. Meeting them at their gate, she hands Eliot his coffee, Alec his latte, and hold her hot chocolate tightly, looking curiously around like the tourist she is.

“Are you two okay?” She asks into a stony silence. She doesn’t like it when they’re not speaking, it feels like everything this twice as hard. “We can change our tickets.”

Alec shakes his head. “We’ll be fine. I’m pissed, but we can discuss it later.” That’s… not good. But now isn’t a great time to get into either.

_We change together._ She repeats it like a mantra, holding it tight as they file onto the plane and take off. They promised. Some of that promise may need to be renegotiated in the light of immortality, but they _promised_.

They explode as soon as they reach the safehouse, shouting at each other. She watches them for a few minutes before climbing out a window, escaping the yelling and heading towards the tile roof. It’s not a great place to hide— the city is sun soaked, the tiles reflecting the warmth back into her— but it’s high, and alone, and half-hidden.

There’s a flea market the next street over, and she thinks it might be a good place to spend some time, when they’re speaking to each other again. Alec likes supporting local artists and she thinks she can convince Eliot to let her put braids into his hair again. Maybe Nile too?

She relaxes in the sun, wishing she had something to fidget with, but she’d been in too big of a hurry. Instead, she mentally designs a new rig, one better suited for the variety of new body types she’s going to be working with now. Longer straps, real hard points to latch a second person on.

Her stomach rumbles hours later, well after the flea market has closed down for the afternoon, and she thinks it’s probably about time to brave the anger downstairs.

It’s not like she can’t leave again if they’re still fighting.

Alec is the only one still in the apartment, fiddling with a computer. “El went for food,” he says quietly.

“Alright.” She settles silently in the open window, an easy escape route.

“I’m not angry that you hid the immortal thing from me,” Alec starts, looking firmly at his computer. “I’m angry that you faked your deaths without a word of it to me. You took off with barely a word, said you had a solo job, and then not a word. I had to find out from _Sophie_ that you knew you were in danger. That all of us were in danger.”

Parker swallows, nods. “I… I didn’t know we were all in danger when I left. I thought it was… I thought I was the only one. If someone walked away from Merrick’s fall, I just…” She blows out a breath, looking out the window with longing. Things are easier up high. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. Because she knows that’s the important part. “I didn’t mean to hurt you and I didn’t like walking away knowing you would think we were dead. I wasn’t planning on leaving you at all. But I did.”

Alec pushes away from the table, approaching her slowly. “Thank you for apologizing.” He pulls her into a hug a few seconds later and she can feel her shoulders coming down as he does, finally relaxing. “I’m still hurt, but we’re gonna be okay, mama. There’s just a lot more change than we expected when we made our promises.”

She nods, staying wrapped up in his hug— at this point, he needs it more than she needs to be comfortable, she can deal with it for a little while longer.

Eliot comes in eventually, drops the food on the table and pulls them both close for a couple minutes before backing off. “Let me make dinner, you two. Then we can see what this place needs before we split up again.”

* * *

They’ve changed trains twice, its something approaching day three of travel, before Quynh comes anywhere near him. She leaves Andy dozing across the car to do it, which possibly says more than she thinks it does, but he stays quiet.

He’s only here because their consciences wouldn’t let them leave him captive. No matter how badly he craves their forgiveness— or the comforting oblivion of his flask— it won’t happen.

“What are you going to do?” Quynh asks.

Sebastien shrugs. “Get you two to the safehouse, listen to my modified sentence, and then leave.” Joe and Nicky had barely looked at him. “Brazil is nice this time of year. I don’t… I’ll stay away. You and Andy deserve her remaining years in peace.” It hurts to admit it, but he’s been alone even when he was with them.

“No,” she says firmly, a mulish look on her face. “I won’t allow it.”

* * *

_None of us are meant to be alone_. Nile keeps thinking about it, watching the passing countryside as they speed through Spain. She’d known when everything with Merrick went down that exiling Booker was the wrong thing, but had hoped that everyone would calm down within a few months and they could discuss it again.

Now? There’s no way in hell she’s going to let them send Booker into the wildness by himself for a century. If he isn’t given a choice, she’ll go with him. Fuck all of their worries and needs. He can teach her something, even if they just start with how to drink like a depressed Frenchman. Forgery, maybe. Seems like a useful skill, maybe meeting up with Alec for computer shit? Because even Parker’s announced “knowing nothing” is light years ahead of Nile’s. And she’s the one who grew up with this shit.

Joe settles across from her, leaving Nicky presumably asleep a couple rows back. “You’re thinking heavy thoughts, little sister. I can hear them over Nicky’s snoring.”

“Booker.”

“Ah.” Joe is silent for a long moment before glancing out the window. “We’ll have to have discussions again. My anger has faded. My hurt and betrayal, less so, but I can work through it. I will _not_ ask Nicky to work through his, however.”

“You can feel however you want— emotions are valid, no matter what they are. It’s what you do with them that you’re responsible for.” Nile shifts in her seat, wishing she could go for a run or even a walk. “If you exile him again, I’m going with him,” she says flatly. “Humans are pack animals, and we more so than most. I think Parker is the only one who has successfully been alone for long periods of time and that traumatized her so badly she only remembers the last forty years or so— since she started having people around her.”

Joe nods, glancing over her shoulder towards where Nicky is still sleeping, she guesses. “We’ll discuss it.” He sounds like her auntie, after she’s done being annoyed by the littles and is on the verge of grounding everyone, even the middles.

Nile accepts it, knowing that she’s going to hold her line, regardless. She doesn’t particularly want to spend the next century (Jesus fucking Christ _century)_ pulling Booker out of the Paris equivalent of pool halls and pubs, but she’ll do it anyway. Are there AA meetings in Europe, or is that a particularly puritan form of… something?

Joe sighs, pushing to his feet. He rests his hand on her shoulder, squeezing for a few heartbeats before disappearing back towards Nicky.

* * *

The apartment already smells like dinner by the time they drag themselves up the stairs, something spicy and homey wafting down along with fresh bread. He didn’t starve, but after nearly a week of mediocre protein bars and water from questionable sources, Sebastien isn’t sure if he’ll be able to keep whatever Nicky has created down.

It’s not Nicky at the stove though, or even Eliot. It’s Alec, slapping Nile’s hands away from adding some spice or another and turning around to grin at them. “Third bedroom is for you, ladies. Booker, you’re on the second bed in the front bedroom.”

Somewhat dazed, Sebastien follows Andy’s stalk through the rooms, turning aside to drop his small backpack on the spare bed. He’s not sure how he feels about crashing in the same room as their triad, but he also just needs to accept things. Collapsing on the bed, he buries his head in his hands and just breathes, trying to get his rampaging heartbeat under control.

Gradually, the sounds of the others fade back in— Alec and Nile bickering in the kitchen; the shower running with the sound of at least two bodies— and it feels closer to home than he’s felt in a long time.

By the time he emerges, Eliot and Parker are back from wherever they had been, followed by the squeal of folding chairs. Good thought— most of the safe houses have seating for four, maybe five in a pinch. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he edges his way into the living room, picking up a chair and unfolding it, dropping it next to the folding table they found somewhere. It looks a bit like one of those TV movies about Thanksgiving in the United States, but everyone has a seat.

Everyone has a seat from which to judge him and find him wanting.

Joe and Nicky reappear just before dinner with a selection of juices and wines, picked with no real rhyme or reason beyond what sounded good judging by the look on Eliot’s face as he puts them away— the only other person allowed to be in the kitchen, apparently, since Nicky got hip checked out.

Parker has disappeared somewhere again, Sebastien isn’t sure where, but he wishes he knew. Too many people, all staring at him and wanting him gone.

Hunching in on himself, he stays away from the noisy bustle. Near enough they can watch him, but out of the way. Andy and Quynh have claimed the small sofa in the living room, so he stays in there, reorganizing the bookshelves. He’s been meaning to do it for years, just left it undone as he started talking to Copley and then Merrick. There’s no need for organized bookshelves if he was dead. If they were all dead.

He shouldn’t be here.

His heartbeat speeds up as he looks around from his corner, beating out traitor and betrayal and undeserving…

Eliot is there, dragging him out of his corner and through the window onto the rusty grate of the fire escape. He doesn’t say anything, just taps his finger on Sebastien’s wrist in time to something that only he can hear. It helps, just that single point of touch, relentless as a metronome, keeping him close when his brain tries to spiral out even further.

“Work with me here,” Eliot mutters, looking further up the building. “You’ve been wanting another hitter—“ He makes a face but nods in response to something Sebastien can’t hear. “Of course not. Not unless you want to.”

Sebastien doesn’t have a chance to wonder about it too much— really, developing telepathy would explain so much— before Parker appears, hanging upside down from a rope, her blonde hair streaming around her face. “I’ll make you regret hurting us,” she says bluntly. “But cages are meant to be broken.” And then she’s gone again, back up the rope.

Confused, Sebastien nods slowly, agreeing to something that he doesn’t even know the shape of. Whatever it is, Parker is terrifying and he doesn’t want to piss her off by saying or doing the wrong thing.

“Eliot, Booker. Dinner is ready.” Nicky sticks his head out the window, looking skyward. “Can you tell Parker?”

Eliot nods. “We’ll be in in a moment.” Nicky disappears and Sebastien twists around on his knees to go back in. Eliot stops him with a brief touch to his shoulder. “What ever you think is going to happen in there? Isn’t.”

Pretty words, but meaningless. He knows better than to believe that anyone can override Andy’s decisions. No matter what it is, if she says jump, they’ll all ask how high in the first language that comes to mind. He’s never going to be worth arguing over.

He’s a shell, silent and broken, at dinner, sandwiched between Nile and Alec. They fill his plate with food and keep his glass topped off with one of the fizzy juices Nicky and Joe had brought home. He’s not even sure what he’s eating— something that may have been a paella in a previous life?— but it’s thick and filling and the first real food he’s had in days.

Dinner conversation is tense, everyone knowing what comes next. The others manage a half-way decent round of storytelling— the first job Eliot, Alec, and Parker worked together; Nile and Alec arguing over the better place to get an Italian beef (cue dirty joke from Joe); Nicky claiming Joe inspired Whitman; Andy, softer than Sebastien has ever seen her, smirks as she recites something in Ancient Greek, laughing when Nicky does a literal spit take— and general bonding, but the hanging sword of his fate keeps Sebastien from enjoying the stories.

Once he clears his plate, he grabs his glass— juice for fuck’s sake, but he should have expected that— and escapes back out the window, wondering how he’d lived for over two hundred years without realizing that up was a valid escape. He’s not as graceful at it as Parker, but it’s only a couple minutes of work to reach the roof and look out over the city.

Suddenly, he can breathe, the weight of his exile and expectations sloughed off like a too heavy coat. He’ll pick it back up eventually, but right now, the sun is setting and he is free.

* * *

“If you exile him again, he’s coming with us,” Parker says flatly into the silence after Booker escapes from the table. “Even I know that you can’t cure depression with being alone.”

“None of us should be alone. I can’t believe you forgot that.” Eliot’s hand creeps under the table to squeeze her knee. Not his normal thing, but this whole thing has him off kilter too.

Even if Booker doesn’t come with them, no new jobs for a few months she’s already decided. Not until they’ve got their balance back.

Nile crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow, staring down Andy. “Or I’m leaving too.” She turns towards Alec. “Can you teach me the computer thing? We should have a backup for that anyway.”

“Sure thing. We’ll get you a solid base in all the basic skills.”

Nicky and Joe slide into a private conversation— the same blend of Arabic and Italian dialects they always use, and Parker is going to insist that Eliot teach her. Even arguing, they’re two matching coins, the sort of thing collectors like to have and will pay massive amounts of money for.

“I am still angry. Hurt, might be a better word,” Nicky grumbles. “There will be a time when I miss my brother, but right now, the betrayal hurts more.”

Parker accepts that with a nod, glancing at Eliot and Alec just to double check. “Then he’ll come with us, we’ll go back to doing our thing and Nile can float between the groups as she wishes?” She suspects no one will be doing jobs for a while unless they’re urgent, plenty of time to learn each other’s styles.

Andy has a steel glint in her eye, pissy that someone is challenging her authority. Tough shit: six thousand some-odd years is a long time, but Parker knows her business. The old way did nothing. .

“It is the best solution, Andromache.” Quynh rests her hand on Andy’s tense forearm. “The three he harmed can heal. Booker can heal.”

Joe and Nicky nod— Parker thinks they’ll forgive him faster if he’s on their periphery, she’s just not sure if they know that— and it’s done. Alec and Nile are out of their chairs like shots, racing towards the window to climb after him.

“Maybe we can train him into grifting,” Eliot says with a grin. “Then he can be the pretty face while I still get to punch people.”

Parker laughs, watching him, watching all of them, realizing that these five have centuries of history that she doesn’t share. “You have the reunion you’ve been wanting for years. I need some alone time.” And there’s three people on her roof. “Do you think Booker will jump off the bridge with me?”

Eliot shrugs, ignoring the shocked looks on the others’ faces. “Give him some time before asking. He’s more like Nate than Alec.”

She nods absently, plotting out an escape route that won’t take her past the others. Not yet. Not while she has this unpleasant buzzing feeling because her emotions are trying to spill out.

* * *

Draining the apple juice still in his glass, Eliot rinses it out and holds up the unopened wine bottle. “Anyone? It’s been…” He stumbles to a stop, scrubbing his free hand down his face. “It’s been,” he repeats finally, letting it hang as a complete sentence.

Joe takes pity on him, standing up and pushing Eliot back to the table. “Sit down, brother. We’re all together again, enjoy it.”

He watches Eliot swallow, and it hits him again not how different Eliot is from the man he spent six hundred years beside, but how much _more_.

Opening the bottle is the work of seconds and he waters it the way wine should be, before filling everyone’s cup. “We survived,” Joe says simply. “May we always survive to end our days in peace.”

They knock their cups together— cheap ceramic coffee mugs against hundred year old crystal against a teacup that Joe doesn’t recognize— and take long swallows before collapsing back into their chairs.

“I’m glad to have you back,” Nicky says suddenly. “I have missed you. I have missed you both.”

Eliot and Quynh nod with matching long sighs. “I missed you too, little brother.” Quynh drags Nicky towards her, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

“Parker is going to want to work together more closely. Once we’ve all figured out how this is going to work.”

Joe watches the subtle tightening of Nicky’s jaw and shrugs. “Eventually, we can make that work.”

Eliot nods easily, already accepting their reluctance with more grace than they probably deserve. “Just a heads up for when she gets it in her head to go after a target that needs more faces. We’re… pretty well burned with our contacts, I don’t even know how we’re going to be working jobs.” He chuckles darkly and drains his cup. “Something to figure out I guess.”

Joe makes an effort to change the topic to something lighter— a wild stab at the football standings, not that any of them have been paying attention— which turns to laughter and joy, the same way it has been around centuries of campfires and hearths in dozens of cities.

Eventually, they draw the younger three in from the roof, looking more settled in themselves, and then Parker shows back up, wearing a new jacket, her hands hidden in the pockets and this, _this_ , is what was missing from Copley’s boards. The laughter and joy and hope they try to share.

**Author's Note:**

> Like most folks, I watched TOG and went... So, Eliot's immortal. Because of course he is. And then I went... and he's pissed that Joe and Nicky don't know how to break out of zipties. 50k later, the scene about zipties... never got included. Oops. Of course, I never expected that the First and Second David Jobs would come up either, so...


End file.
